iPad Deployment and Teacher PD

I have been reading my fair share of blogs, wikis and other documentation as schools around the world are deploying iPads in their classroom. It is finally our turn at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School to welcome 20 brand new shiny iPad2s (no cart, just individual iPads)

In the spirit of passing on the trials and errors, as we get the devices ready to be used in the classroom by teachers and students, I am documenting our process.

Here are additional resources, I used to help us along the way:

• Moving at the Speed of Creativity – Here Come the iPads – Now What? iPad Deployment
• ipadschools – How the set up went
• How to set up class iPads and iPods

Here we go:

1. Took the iPads out of the box and attached a SmartCover to it.
2. Used a designated “mother” laptop to create a dedicated Apple iTunes account. I had created also a dedicated email account for the iTunes account on the school’s domain, since I did not want to have a specific person attached to the account with their email.
3. Once the iTunes account was set up on the laptop, I started downloading all the free apps, were mandatory (in my opinion) to start out with (see two screenshots below)
4. I plugged in the first iPad via USB to the “mother” laptop.
5. Registered the iPad
6. Used the same apple ID, that I created when I set up the original iTunes account
7. Noted the serial number
8. The first iPad that was set up, was set up as a “new” iPad.
9. We decided on naming each one of our iPads after a famous Jewish Person (Ex. Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Steven Spielberg, David Ben Gurion, etc.)
10. Subsequent iPads were set up by “Restoring from the backup of: “ex.:Albert Einstein”.
11. The iPads synced all the free iPad apps that I have on the “mother” laptop.
12. As I plugged in each iPad separately, I upgraded the iPad software, if it was not up to date.
13. Renamed each new iPad with a new name from our selected list of famous Jewish People
14. Created an e-mail address for each iPad identity on our school’s domain (ex. albert.einstein@ourschool’sdomain.org)
15. Connect each iPad to our school’s wifi
16. Added the e-mail account to each iPad. Example. Albert Einstein iPad was set up with his own email albert.einstein@ourschool’sdomain.org)

I created a Program Manager e-mail account and two Program Facilitator e-mail accounts under our domain to apply to the  App Store Volume Purchase Program. Take a look at these helpful links, that explain the program visually and a little more in detail.

• Tony Vincent’s App Store Volume Purchase Program Explained
• iPads at Burley: App Store Volume Purchase Program

Next steps will be:

1. Teacher PD-Part I: Introduction to iPads in Education
2. Teacher PD- Part II: Automated vs Transformative use of iPads
3. Get them into the hand of our students.
4. Test out the “fluency” of being able to consume, create, disseminate, integrate and work with shared iPads across nine different grade levels.
5. Decide on which paid apps will make the cut to be part of our app library.
6. Assess and document student learning, engagement and motivation when using iPads vs. laptops or no tech tools.