Two Week iPad Trial: Part 2 (the planning process)
Warning in advance: This is the kind of boring, technical post. If you’re looking for apps and activities, come back in another post.
Back in November or so, my awesome district IT guys dropped off a couple of iPads for my school. Gifts from the district.
It was pretty awesome.
I know that in some buildings, it seemed like those devices went to administrators or other tech people. Fortunately, I’d already had the chance to borrow one for a few months earlier in the year, so I knew that I could certainly survive without one for the time being.
So my librarian and I got them into the system and started checking them out to teachers. I loaded them up with a bunch of mostly free apps and a couple of paid ones with a little bit of leftover gift card money from our PTO.
When I handed one over, I took about two minutes to show them the basics: turning it on, flipping through pages of apps, and using the home button. The base directive, implied if not explicitly stated, was to explore, discover, and think about how to use it in the classroom. The more common way I probably stated that was, “Play with it, and tell me what you think.”
They told me, and it was pretty much all positive. I encouraged them to not just play with it themselves, but to have the kids try it out, too. One of the teachers in my school has fourth graders, so she twisted their arms to play with it. Their feedback was encouraging and valuable.
The inevitable conclusion of teachers using these and bringing them into their classrooms was clear: we needed to try out a class set. Fortunately, I knew somebody who had one.
The Media Specialist at the Middle School in my district, Dennis Villano, is not only a great guy with a wealth of knowledge, he also bought 20 iPads or so with some of his budget. After asking, he was kind enough to let me pick a couple of weeks to borrow them.
I chose the end of March for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was immediately following the end of the marking period, so teachers wouldn’t be freaking out about grades. Secondly, while some classes would be dealing with standardized tests, I knew I could work around it, and that it might disrupt the normal schedule in beneficial ways.
Once I had the date, I needed a plan for how to get these out into the classrooms.
Some math: 22 classrooms divided by 9* days = just under 2 and a half classrooms per day. In my mind, while spreading the wealth equally, this system would do a disservice to actually trying to put the iPads through their paces. Every class would be more or less the same: “Hey kids, here are some iPads! Here’s how to use them! Let’s check out some apps quickly! Gotta go, kthxbai!”
In my mind, that would have been a waste of two weeks. So I came up with an alternate plan. For six of the days, I would spend a full day in one classroom, one at each grade level K-5. For the remaining three days, I’d try to get around to as many classrooms as possible. A few weeks before they arrived, I threw it out to everybody in an e-mail, asking for people who’d like to try them out for the day.
In every grade, I had one teacher step up almost immediately for the full day. Once those were full, I had a harder time immediately filling the remaining three days, although they did end up all booked in the end. In every grade, I got to at least two out of the three or four classes. In the end I was fortunate enough to not have to turn anybody away who requested to have them for at least a little while.
In my next and post in the series, I’ll do a breakdown of the activities we tried and the apps we used.
*As a warning, it takes a really long time to set up a bunch of iPads when you want them all to look and feel the same from positioning of apps. I created a base template iPad from oe of my own and backed it up. I then had to restore each iPad from that backup. When loading ~4Gb of apps, this takes about 25 minutes per iPad. It made for a really long first day with the iPads, and not having them get into the classroom. Luckily, I planned for this from the start.
April 11th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Looking forward to hearing the overall impressions from the teachers. I’m at the one month mark with a personal iPad and in short it’s life changing. Are your teachers allowed or encouraged to bring the devices home for the night? The potential this tool has to level the information playing field for students across all backgrounds is staggering. I hope your teachers and students catch the bug. We’re not quite there yet as a district but it’s great to hear that there are people out there willing to invest time to meticulously set each up so as to alleviate any possible confusion issues. Best of luck to you and your school, Dan.
April 11th, 2011 at 10:05 pm
My wife surprised me with an iPad 2 for our anniversary and I am beyond excited. It should be here sometime next week and I am already thinking about how I can use it with my students. My district hasn’t quite bought in to iPads, so I’m hoping I can lead the charge.
Thanks for the post. I’ll keep an eye out for part 3 and beyond. I look forward to living vicariously through you while I anxiously await a special package from the mailman!
April 11th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Hey Mike, I’m one of those teachers Dan blessed with an iPad day and I’m happy to give you my overall impressions!
Yes, we’re encouraged to take the iPads home and put them through their paces. In my case, I have my own personal iPad and am constantly discovering ways that I could use it in my teaching. The most frustrating part is finding ways that I could use a class set of iPads to personalize/individualize student learning and then knowing that my time with the class set is over.
Dan can post Part 3 with all the apps we used. What amazed me was how invested my students became in their learning when they were really given control over it and we pulled out all the stops. My Math class begged to be able to skip recess to show more of what they knew. My Science students were so engaged in making sure they understood material and took good notes that they were looking for time during the day to improve upon what they did in the morning.
And the look on the face of my most reluctant writer when we played his digital story for the class the next day will stay with me forever. Later, I showed him Dragon Dictation on my personal iPad and the next thing I knew, he had written the paragraph he’d been refusing to produce for the previous two days.
Next year, our high school is slated to go 1:1 with iPads. Those of us in elementary aren’t likely to see a class set again and it breaks my heart.
April 12th, 2011 at 8:14 am
Mike, yes, I very much encouraged teachers to take them home and play with them. One of my most tech-phobic teachers took one home for one night and came back with the three most perfect apps to use with her class when I came in, and she completely nailed it on a level I wouldn’t have gotten because I’m not and never have been a kindergarten teacher. Everybody that takes one home comes back with ideas for their class and new thoughts on how to use the device that I hadn’t considered.
John, trust me when I tell you that it won’t be difficult to find ways to use it with your students.
Diana, thanks again for being my first guinea pig class. I’m trying to work as many angles as possible to maximize our collection of devices for next year.
April 12th, 2011 at 8:46 am
[...] « This week’s comments elsewhere (weekly) | Two Week iPad Trial: Part 2 (the planning process) [...]
April 12th, 2011 at 8:55 am
Dan,
Everything I have heard from teachers and students about your two week iPad trial has been overwhelmingly positive. I am very excited about the 1:1 initiative that we are working on for Burlington High School and I think that we could see incredible results from putting a significant number of iPads in our elementary schools.
Dennis Villano´s last [type] ..Baseball and Finding the Hook
April 19th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
[...] « Two Week iPad Trial: Part 2 (the planning process) | This week’s comments elsewhere (weekly) [...]
April 26th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
[...] Part 2 [...]
May 9th, 2011 at 11:46 am
[...] Part 2 [...]
January 30th, 2012 at 11:20 am
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