When the iPad came out, we put checkable iPad carts into each of our libraries. At Winter Break, we polled the usage of those carts and found the devices were being underutilized; we concluded it was because they were designed to be personal devices and were not easily shared. That prompted us, the Tech Dept., to connect with the 7th Grade faculty to talk about trialing a Mobile Learning Program, where every student and faculty in the 7th Grade would have an iPad.
We did very little training ahead of time. We purchased iPads for faculty so they could play around with them in December and January and then in February, we made iPads available to students for use during the school day. To take the pressure off the teachers who were being asked to introduce these new tools into the classroom, we communicated to families that our first year would be a “trial of a pilot program”. The first year wasn’t even a pilot! As faculty thought about entering into a pilot program the following year, they could play around with apps in their classrooms because their students would already have iPads.
Initially we did not consult many faculty outside the 7th Grade about the iPad one-to-one trial. Our position at the time was that we didn’t want to have a conversation about an iPads before we knew what we were talking about. While we had a lot of experience with laptops and desktops, we didn’t even know what the iPad could do.
After handing out the iPads, we then watched and learned from our 7th Grade faculty and students. We created a discussion forum for students to share about what was going well and what was not going so well with the program. In the first few months we received over 60 pages of comments and as a result we made changes to the program such as allowing the iPads to go home, opening Middle School student email to the Internet, purchasing styluses, and setting up Dropbox for Business accounts.
We also purchased Apple TVs for each classroom so students and faculty could share their work with the click of a button.
Within the first couple weeks we knew we had something worth investigating more when teachers started playing around with new ways of engaging their students and students started using the iPads to replace paper and pen. Some teachers even began introducing components of a flipped classroom. Some teachers even said being a part of the iPad program made them remember why they had gone into teaching.
Year two was suppose to be a pilot of the Mobile Learning Program in 7th Grade but those students and families going into 8th Grade and 8th Grade faculty told us we could not send the 7th Graders to 8thGrade without providing them with iPads. This year, we have expanded the iPad Mobile Learning program through the Tenth Grade and next year we’ll expand through Twelfth.
Click here for more information about our iPad One-to-One Mobile Learning Program.
It’s worth noting that because the iPad is basically an appliance, requiring little troubleshooting, we were able to double the number of devices we support, adding 620 iPads over the past two years, without adding any additional staff.