Thursday, March 21, 2013

How Do You Distribute Student iPads in a 1:1?

There are many different ways of handling the distribution of devices to students. Do they receive them at Orientation? Do you give them a week or two to get into the swing of things? What exactly do the students receive?

At our school, we held an iPad Night in early October. This parent-only event consisted of a 45 minute presentation detailing the Pilot, what our hopes were, how excited everyone was to give this a try and a teacher described how he would be using the devices from day one in his history classes.

The parents then viewed a PowerPoint presentation that contained instructions on setting up an Apple ID for their child and how to enroll the device in the school's Mobile Device Management system. This was followed by a brief question and answer session.

After the presentation, the families moved into our cafeteria and were seated at tables by homeroom. Each place setting contained a school logo shopping bag that contained the iPad, a Bluetooth keyboard case, a stylus, a copy of the instructional PowerPoint presentation they viewed earlier, a copy of the Honorable Use Policy, and a copy of the parent agreement. The parents read over and signed the two documents and headed home with the bag.

We received a lot of compliments on the structure of the evening and plan to repeat the process if the Pilot is successful and we adopt a 1:1 program.

Twitter: @iPadEdTech