The 1:1 iPad pilot program...oooohhh..sounds very serious. It sounds like a bunch of people sitting in a think tank type of room and testing out iPads in every which way. Testing every app, how every app runs, what it does, how it works with other apps. Maybe the testers have to fill out a checklist for each app, each iPad etc. It sounds like a full on testing and quality assurance program. Well, normally, there is a lot of testing that goes with hardware and software before it reaches the consumers but sometimes the only “real” testing that can happen when the product goes out into the real world. And then there was the pilot program! This program began to make a public statement to all administrators, teachers, students and parents that even though we have prepared and trained for iPad use in the classroom as much as we possibly can, when the students actually start using in the classroom we will find many problems - guaranteed! Things will “break”! They either just won’t work, we may have way too much access to certain Internet sites or be blocked out of basic educational sites too. Some students will take a while to master the iPad while some will be pros from the get-go. Some teachers will embrace the iPads while some will hate them. The pilot program is a battlefield! Everything that could possibly happen will, we expect it and we are prepared to validate them and try to resolve them. We need to emphasize this over and over to our students, teachers and parents so that everything is out on the table. It’s going to be a team effort and everyone needs to get involved to help us find the problems so that we can fix them and improve the program.
So what kinds of problems are we talking about?
First, we are talking about the easy access to internet sites. At this point, our firewall and proxy servers are as good as we can make it but it’s not perfect. Students and teachers have to communicate sites that they need and sites that students should not be allowed to go on, for example, certain gaming sites. By nature, initial use of iPads in the classroom is a distraction until we are able to create a sense of responsibility and the idea that the iPad is a tool for the classroom and not for personal or social use.
Another problem that can come up during an iPad pilot program is the initial ability to access all of the information and data that the students have input into their school-issued iPads and being able to access it at home. During our iPad pilot program, we did not allow students to take home their iPads until about 3 months into the program. This meant that we needed to train students on solutions to saving their data in the cloud, for example, with Dropbox and Gmail calendars.
Another issue that came up and is a continual challenge is the classroom management changes that needed to take place. Teachers had to have a heightened awareness on what their students were doing on their iPads. They needed to “police” the appropriate use of the devices and the random useless doodling that went on. Techniques such as circulating about the room, putting away the ipads until necessary for the lesson and taking away the iPads from a student who was off task were initial solutions to the problem. Although, this has been a major challenge for our teachers, we are confident that with more experience we can overcome the issues by enforcing the consequences involved in iPad misuse across all teachers and classrooms, finding iPad management software to help manage the iPads in the classroom and creating a better sense of responsibility among our students.
Now that we have established that the ipad 1:1 pilot program is pretty much a free for all where anything can happen. Let’s not harp on the bad stuff, at least not the entire time!How about using the pilot program to experiment with new learning techniques and new ways to assess the students. How about sharing how some students who have had poor organizational skills throughout their elementary career are now forced to be more organized and are feeling pretty good about themselves. What about the times where the IT student in training is excited about showing me something cool in the ipad settings or that he/she found a bug!
The iPad pilot program is an exciting and necessary start to implementing an ipad program in your school so that all strengths and weaknesses can be brought out and dealt with in a systematic fashion before implementing a full on 1:1 mobile device program. Be expected to be frustrated, overwhelmed, and frantic when you start. It’s a bumpy ride but the landing is well worth the trip!!!
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