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:
- Took the iPads out of the box and attached a SmartCover to it.
- 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.
- 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)
- I plugged in the first iPad via USB to the “mother” laptop.
- Registered the iPad
- Used the same apple ID, that I created when I set up the original iTunes account
- Noted the serial number
- The first iPad that was set up, was set up as a “new” iPad.
- 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.)
- Subsequent iPads were set up by “Restoring from the backup of: “ex.:Albert Einstein”.
- The iPads synced all the free iPad apps that I have on the “mother” laptop.
- As I plugged in each iPad separately, I upgraded the iPad software, if it was not up to date.
- Renamed each new iPad with a new name from our selected list of famous Jewish People
- Created an e-mail address for each iPad identity on our school’s domain (ex. albert.einstein@ourschool’sdomain.org)
- Connect each iPad to our school’s wifi
- 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:
- Teacher PD-Part I: Introduction to iPads in Education
- Teacher PD- Part II: Automated vs Transformative use of iPads
- Get them into the hand of our students.
- Test out the “fluency” of being able to consume, create, disseminate, integrate and work with shared iPads across nine different grade levels.
- Decide on which paid apps will make the cut to be part of our app library.
- Assess and document student learning, engagement and motivation when using iPads vs. laptops or no tech tools.
I’d love to know more about how you are assessing and documenting “‘fluency’ of being able to consume, create, disseminate, integrate and work with shared iPads across nine different grade levels.”
Ian recently posted..The iPad 2: Responsible Use & Making Obsolete Policies Obvious
@Ian
You can read more how I see the difference between developing skills, being literate and being fluent on an iPad in a previous post (iPad Fluency).
I am looking to document and asses the following:
* connect tasks effortless together (ex.creating and editing a video, then uploading, embedding and disseminating on several platforms)
* CREATE and then being able to COMMUNICATE- the ability to create and communicate your creation is one of the main characteristics of fluency
*read in an RSS Reader and seamlessly disseminate links to Twitter, Facebook and to other social bookmarking service
* record, edit and then publish a movie that automatically posts to an online hub
*take an image…edit…then automatically post to a photo stream as well as embed into a blog post
*work within several apps, then remix content from each one by being able to import them from one app to another.
*not having to rely on a laptop as a “translator” to convert a file, remix files, upload files, having to email files in order to send them on to a specific depository or grab an embed code, etc.
*seamlessly switch between different accounts to disseminate as a different user of the platform (ex. Twitter, Email, Facebook)
The part about the “shared” iPads will be a work in progress, since we are just rolling the devices out. So far, the iPads are personalized devices to me. I am not sure how we should set up the devices to be able to easily switch between users. We are in the process of setting up classroom or school accounts to be able to easily send files on to another platform. Ex. Flickr, Vimeo, Dropbox, etc. We will also take advantage of services that provide personalized e-mail addresses to upload and post, so students would e-mail their finished product (image, audio, video) to a specified email address.
Also take a look at my Flickr set about Fluency. These are the skills and tools, I am looking for my students to use with the iPad…seamlessly and integrated…in order to express and show their learning.
That’s a solid list, thanks. It is the movement of media or information between apps and between the iPad and cloud or communication services that I’m most interested in, myself. Beyond that, pure consumption seems to be the other strong suit of the iPad. I also like the inclusion of using an RSS reader or other mode of information channeling and subsequent sharing because of the focus on literate consumption. One of my classes is 1 to 1 on the iPad as part of a pilot program and I would like to create some rubrics with them for these kinds of fluency or literacy concepts. They just got them full time on Friday, so it’s early days, but I can see this is the direction we need to go. If we come up with anything cool, I’ll share it!
Ian recently posted..The iPad 2: Responsible Use & Making Obsolete Policies Obvious
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Hi, I love what you are doing with the iPads in your school. Can I just ask, as I am a little unsure, are all of the iPads synced to the one iTunes account? If yes, was this only possible due to the Volume Purchase Program? This program is unavailable in the UK but I am trying to see if I can still sync all the free apps from the one Apple ID rather than creating several.
Thank you, Abby
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The introduction of the iPad to the classroom is going to be one of the best ways for students to be able to connect with the world. As a future teacher I am looking forward to finding all the possibilities that technology will add to the classroom. Even more exciting is that I have another a few years before I will be able to get into any classroom, what will happen in between now and then. I am wondering, for my own future ideas, how you are going to incorporate the iPad for the student’s use. Will the student be using it during the lecture or will it be more supplementary or a little bit of both? What kind of assignments will you be assigning them, creating a book, write their own apps, follow what is going on in the news, or just give them the ability to put their fingers on the whole world.
@bhasting1987
‘Your iPad Development and Teacher PD’ offers an in-depth amount of information. Especially the iPads in Education Parts 1 and 2 using slideshare are very helpful. Do you have any archived recording of your presentation? I liked the iPad Fluency list which helps me to master how to use an iPad. Since I am an AT Specialist, I always have to think about students with special needs. Do you have anything special that you would suggest?
Kaz recently posted..Free / Low-cost software
I am sorry it took so long to respond but I have been thinking about any suggestions that I could give you and it has not been an easy question for me to answer. I am an epileptic so the special needs question is one that I think I can answer fairly well. I have for the last nine or ten years been an advocate, to be a little cliche, of handicapbale not handicap. I think that if you were to get the kids, especially the handicap, to research disorders such as epilepsy and have them use the iPads to make their own, or as a class, reports/apps to bring up the awareness of “X” disorder. Then they would not only be learning about the medical, psychological, physical, and publicity of “X” disorder but they would be able to bring their research to the rest of the world. I really do not know what else I can say I am only just starting my teaching courses so I do not have the knowledge of how a classroom works. I hope that I might have given you an idea but at the same time I am sure that this is just a basic “no duh we have already thought of that” type answer. I wish that I have the money to be able to purchase, at least, the basic model of the iPad so I could give a more knowledgeable answer. As I said before, I hope that there is at least some new idea as to what can be done in the classroom.
Sincerely
Brandon
P.S. I am an advocate and do speak to people who are having trouble with disabilities, manly epilepsy, talk to people with any disorder and any age. If you have any child, friend, or family member that is having trouble dealing with the stress that comes with disabilities then please have them e-mail me at
Fallinstickman@gmail.com
Have them put their name and why they are writing and “langwitches.org” in the subject line or I will think that it is spam. Also please let it only be for counseling. I am always willing to help.
I am presently in the process of trying to deploy a cart of 20 iPads and have done the steps 1-13. I downloaded 145 apps and put them all into content-specific folders. In doing the back-up and restore I had to do it individually and rename as you did. However, now that I did that, when I go back to the “mother mac”, the only way I can use it is to download an app. Even then, how do I then get it out to the iPads. It seems like every time my teachers want to download and use a new application, I have to do the back up and restore then rename to each one of them. It feels like the sync process would be a whole lot easier and more efficient. Would you be willing to respond through e-mail to help make this process less painful? The Apple people have been very helpful but the 2 people that I have talked to have given me very different answers.
Mary Ann,
When I back up, I can choose to restore from a drop down list with all the iPads that I named, so I don’t have to rename them anytime. We are looking into the option of purchasing a sync station. It is taking too much time to upgrade, backup, sync every one individually.