Our visit to Cedar Rapids Prairie’s 1:1 Macbook Air deployment

Entry way of Prairie Point, which houses 7th, 8th, and 9th grade.

As part of our district’s 1:1 study, we recently sent a team to visit the 1:1 roll out at College Community School District, Iowa  (commonly known as Cedar Rapids Prairie).  The following is not the final notes/findings from our entire group, but instead just a summary of my personal notes.

Tell us your story.. how did you become 1:1?

Discussion started three years ago and they’ve been working with the board of education, administrators, and staff since that time.   They conducted school visits like many other districts and formed a K-12 committee to study the issue. 

When did you deploy?  What device and to what grade levels?

Students at grade 9-12 received a Macbook Air starting this past fall (August 2012).

Why did you go 1:1?

We are interested in….  Project Based Learning and Digital Literacy.  

Everyone says that we are preparing students for their future. If that’s true – technology has to be a part of preparing them for their future, right?   Technology helps drive us towards changing our classrooms from allowing students to be passive consumers to active creators. 

What person or group was the driving force?

The conversation and driving force started with the Curriculum Director and Director of Technology.   As part of their conversation, it was discussed that “If we don’t lead this, who will?”  Also, as they discussed their goal of moving towards problem based learning, the discussions with teachers resulted in teachers commenting  “If our students had access to mobile device, we could easily move towards project based learning.”

What hidden issues/aspects did you find?

1.  Logistics of deploying large numbers of computers can be overwhelming. We spent a lot of time planning, but we learned that you can’t plan for everything.

2. Have a way to monitor students.  We heard from some individuals that you’ll need to spend more time on ethical usage and bullying.  They eventually purchased DyKnow for monitoring.  (Note: The high school felt that a monitoring tool was critical. However, discussions with other schools showed that the need was not district-wide).  As to whether monitoring software is really needed may depend on your need, but there is no doubt that you must plan for discussions on appropriate usage with students.

If you could do it again, what would you do differently?

1. Temper your initial expectations.  Make your initial expectations realistic and keep providing support to move forward.  

2. Use a more phased approach.  There’s no doubt that some folks were still stressed by the initial deployment.  However, we also found it interesting that we collected some feedback that it was important to get all the devices out right away to all students – as they felt that its a selling point that builds support with your parents/community.

 

How are you monitoring your progress? Since digital literacy is a significant part of the overall goals, they have devised common digital literacy assessments that are used with all 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th graders.  This is the first year of this implementation, so results were not yet available. 

In addition, staff are asked to complete a teacher practice profile, basically a self assessment to help indicate their progress.

Other general notes………….

Digital Literacy Advisory is a district wide committee that oversees training, roll outs, and monitors progress of the initiative.  The group was much larger at the outset, but its still 10 to 15 people currently and they meet about 4 times a year.  Topics that they discuss include: policy review, reviewing student assessment data, discussing professional development.

Digital Literacy Trainers…   Two existing staff members from each building that have been given additional training and expectations to help with the professional development related to digital literacy.  Their role is to go beyond tools training, to extend into integration and transformative change.

Give teachers professional development in the same method you would want them to use it in the classroom

Currently spending approximately $1100 per student for the device/software.  

Would like to have devices for 5th grade thru 12th grade.

Selected the Apple Macbook Air based on light weight, mobile, fast, great battery life.  Also interested in establishing a common set of tools for students, which includes.. iLife Suite, Microsoft Office, and Google Apps.

There is no standardized Learning Managements System or LMS (such as Moodle, Schoology, Edmodo, etc)   They felt that mandating an LMS is restricting to staff and students.  Instead, the requirement is to have your information on-line and available within the district’s staff directory.  Each teacher can decide what websites/tool is best for their online resources. 

Although the project was (and still is) Kindergarten thru 12th grade focused… and, even though some resources have been redistributed to K-8, there is definitely a strong concern that there are not enough resources at the lower grades and that more resources are needed at K-8.

Written by Brian Abeling, @wdmtech

My notes from visiting 1:1 iPad deployment at Johnston Schools

As part of our district’s 1:1 study, we recently sent a team to visit the 1:1 roll out at Johnston Schools, Iowa. The following is not the final notes/findings from our entire group, but instead just a summary of my personal notes.

Tell us your story… Why did you go 1:1?

The desire to move to 1:1 was predominately driven by the community.  Several years ago, during community forums known as “Futures Meetings”, the community kept asking about 1:1 technology access for students.  The topic came up in every one of the community forums.

What results do see or expect to see?

NOTE: At the time we visited, the project was only 9 weeks old.

We expect the technology to support good teaching & learning practices. We also want our initiative to  promoting 21st century skills and digital literacy for students.

Immediately, they saw a difference in student engagement.

Staff have commented that they should shorten the passing time between classes.

Expect to increased focus on 21st century skills and digital literacy.

Feedback so far from parents, includes…  students are better organized, its more efficient, they seeing less paper used, and grading electronically is more efficient and provides more feedback to students in less time.  Parents also felt that the iPad was easier to use than a computer.

Other general notes……

How did you decide on which device?  Since the deployment was specific to grades 10-12 at the high school, they asked departments to help make the pros/cons list related to all of the final devices.  In the end, the departments helped to decide on the iPad.

How many positions were added due to the deployment?  2 FTEs were added, one related to training the other a technical position.

The policy planning took longer than they expected.  As they sent draft policies out for review, they had more revisions than they anticipated.  However, in the end, they felt it was time well spent.

Why was the high school chosen for the deployment? why not another grade?   Two reasons… 1) the “futures” meetings were the driving force behind the project and they focused on the future of the high school in specific.  2) they felt the project could make a significant difference in student engagement at the high school level.

The ability to annotate was significant for them… and Good Notes is the most popular classroom organizational app.

Do students feel that they need keyboards?  Most students adapt, and it’s usually only the adults who seem worried about this topic.  We really like their unique approach to addressing this –>  they created a keyboard cart.  A small cart with just wireless keyboards that a teacher could check out if they felt it was needed.

They created a very clear chart that outlines what is Negotiable and what is Non-Negotiable related to the iPad roll out.   For example, every teacher MUST use Moodle to post their classroom documents and syllabus.

Most professional development was done during the teachers common planning time.

PD contained:  keynote speaker at the start (they referred to as the fire-up), the Meet the iPad sessions, followed up with content specific app training.

How much push back was there on the roll out?  Most of it was when the project was announced, which was mostly concerns/fears about change.  They felt that they turned a significant corner about 4 months before students received their devices.

Student played several key roles in the roll out….  teams of students helped with various issues such as publicity, technical assistance, the actual roll outs, and even helped in developing a mobile app for high school.

They are using Casper Suite from JAMF to manage the devices.  There is a core group of apps installed on all iPads, and then students can use their own personal iTunes accounts to download their own apps.

At the launch event, parents and students were required to attend one of four optional dates/times.  They had 100% attendance.

They gave each student one stylus with their iPads, as they felt it was critical for using the device for annotation.  However, they only provided one – after this, students are able to purchase additional ones from the media center.

Web filtering is provided both at school and at home (as well any location where the device is connected to wifi).  They are using Light Speed Filtering for this task.

Students are required to use the district provided iPad and to use the district provided case.

If the device is lost or stolen – the family pays the full replacement cost.

The district does purchase Apple Care with each iPad, which covers a certain amount of damage.

Families are required to pay a $50 deposit before they can take the iPad home.  If the device is working at the end of the school year, the $50 deposit is returned.

The digital camera/ video camera has been significant for science courses – as its used to record and document their science labs.

What are the core technologies available in each classroom?  Projector, teacher laptop, and an iPad for each student.  Teachers are using software to display their iPad through their teacher laptop and then to the classroom projector.

They conducted some pilot testing in some classrooms the year before the launch.

Heard from several teachers… “Classroom management and physically moving around the classroom is more important now.”

For their first year of the roll out, they are monitoring:  student behavior incidents, student attendance, grades, and staff / student surveys.

Student iPads are randomly pulled from the classroom and are evaluated by staff.  They have found that word gets out fast when this happens… and students understand that their iPad can be taken from them at any point in time for review.

They estimate the total cost of the iPad to be $720 per student.. which includes the apps, management software, and the case.  Estimated $30 to $40 of this is specifically for apps.

Socrative is very popular for promoting formative assessment.

iPad reminders posted on the walls of Johnston High School

Challenges / issues….

Work flow issues….  Several staff we talked with are concerned about the day to day workflow of submitting and grading assignments.  It appeared that many of them are still working with email as the method of submitting and routing of student assignments.  In fact, one teacher commented that he feels that it takes longer to grade assignments than via paper – but he’s hopeful that this will improve.

Distracted by games...    Many staff commented on this – but there are two basic camps on this issue.  One side thinks it’s a technical issue and the solution is to either block all games or not allow students to use their iTunes accounts.  The other side sees an opportunity to teach students about responsible usage.  They pointed out that adults are distracted by their devices too, and we need to make this a teachable moment.   (Side note: other 1:1 iPad visits made this same comment, but also noted that it gets better with time and clearer expectations)

Written by Brian Abeling, @wdmtech