1000 iPad project

Dream big if you are going to dream. Well, the superintendent where I work did. Last spring he decided after attending the National School Boards Association conference that our district would begin to move towards 1:1 with iPads. With board approval he then began taking steps toward making it happen. Over the next few (remember few is a relative term) posts I will begin to chronicle our journey to 1:1 with iPads. I will include what we did and also let you know if I would advise doing differently.

The first step in the process was staffing. He created new position called the Director of Educational Technology. This job is not your typical IT position, in our case it oversees the IT guys and includes the educational side of technology which if we are all honest, most IT guys don't have the time to worry about. Along with that position some other staff were realigned to fill positions of Technology Integration Specialists (my new role). As the only full time Tech. Integration Specialist (Tech Coach might be another name for it) I was given the task of getting the iPads ready to roll.

Step one: Order 1000 iPads. This is close to 900 for students and 100 for teachers. Along with the iPads, 7 Mac mini servers were ordered. With the help of the servers we are able to better control device management, great decision.

What should we have done first? Make sure the network is ready to handle all the new equipment.

We have had some major headaches this summer. The next post will have some of the pitfalls we worked through during the initial steps of this process. Hopefully you can learn from our mistakes.

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