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LA officials may delay school iPad rollout after students hack them in a week

Just a week after it began the first phase of putting iPads in the hands of all 640,000 students in the region, the Los Angeles school district already has a fight on its hands. In a matter of days, 300 children at Theodore Roosevelt High School managed to work around protective measures placed on the Apple tablets, giving them complete access to features -- including Facebook, Twitter and other apps -- that should otherwise have been blocked.

Students bypassed the security lock on the device by deleting a personal profile preloaded in the settings -- a simple trick that has the school district police chief recommending the board limit the $1 billion rollout (including hardware and other related expenses) before it turns into a "runaway train scenario." For now, officials have banned home use of the iPads while they assess ways to better restrict access -- they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids.

[Original image credit: flickingerbrad, Flickr]