3-2-1 Takeoff!!! The 1:1 iPad Pilot Program Begins!

This past summer, our team of Head of School, principals, IT members and teachers spent countless of hours researching, testing, playing, and learning about iPads in schools and how our school, Brauser Maimonides Academy could jump on the mobile device in education bandwagon. The first hurdle was winning the Administration over. There number one concern was cost and overall benefit. Where are we going to get the money to pay for tablets for all of our Middle School students? Can we ask parents to buy one for their child? What are the students going to be doing with the iPads in class? Lot’s of worrisome questions and concerns came over them. After a generous contribution to support an iPad program at our school and research supporting the benefits of ipads in the classroom, the next hurdle was the teachers. OK teachers, here is an iPad, use it in the classroom to help motivate, collaborate, and integrate technology into your curriculum. Huh? Sitting in the room with 20 Middle School teachers after just giving them an iPad to take home for the summer was a glimpse into how all adults view technology today. Some had never used one before and took some time to figure it out. Others thought it was so awesome and started to download their favorite free iPad apps almost immediately. A couple sat in the corner with a look at disgust thinking “ I am a good teacher, I don’t need or want this thing in my classroom.” An of course, those few educators looked at me with a gleam in their eyes saying “It’s about time!”. Thankfully, after months of “alone time” with their iPads, a full week of iPad in the classroom training at teacher orientation and finally, 2 weeks of iPad classroom experience. Our school can proudly say that our Middle School teachers are 21st century educators! Wow! The excitement and creativity that our educators embraced has transformed their teaching and our students learning.

Needless to say that our students have welcomed the iPads into their school day just like the first time a young child is given a crayon and paper to draw a picture! It was so natural for these digital kids to embrace the iPad as an extension of their mind! After initial training sessions on what to “really” do with the iPad in class, for example, note taking and recording homework assignments, and two weeks of school, I don’t think these students can ever go back to the way things were again! The students seem to have a happier aura about them in the classroom. There have been many incidents after only two weeks of teachers sharing stories with me of their success in the classroom and with an individual student who has begun to excel, finally, with the use of the iPad. If this is just the first 2 weeks, I can’t wait for the rest of the year!

After administrators, teachers, students, the final group, the biggest challenge was our parent body. “Are you giving my child total and unlimited access to the internet?” “This is going to be a complete distraction, the kids are going to play games all day long!” “I just don’t see how this toy will help my child in school” After two weeks of school with just a couple of lengthy parent emails communicating their concern about texting and emailing and just one or two positive comments. It was Back to School night. My hands shivered, my knees shook, my forehead was drenched! We had prepared a short presentation addressing only a few key features to our iPad pilot program. What do we want to accomplish during this time. How we want to accomplish it and how this will help our student. We mentioned the few areas of concern that parents were thinking, texting, internet firewalls, and classroom supervision. And then tehre was silence. The parents did a walk through to their middle schoolers classrooms with their child’s ipad in tow. From class to class, teacher to teacher they were shown by example, how it is to be a kid with an iPad at BMA. Let’s just say that the overall impression from the parents was more positive and thankful then we could have anticipated.

It has been an amazing feeling of achievement for our school in this short period of time and this feeling will inspire us to move forward with our pilot program until we are no longer piloting but soaring!!

Tags: 1:1, device, ipad, mobile, pilot

2 members like this

Comment by Shira Leibowitz on September 13, 2012 at 6:14am: Your careful implementation and support for administration, teachers, parents, and most especially students in ways of using an ipad for meaningful learning can be a model for other schools. This is an important converstion to continue. Thanks so much for sharing your insights!

Comment by Alisa R. Watman on September 19, 2012 at 8:41pm: Good for you Hanna. I hope to read more about iPads in your school. Are the iPads going to be used for

all subjects, including Chumash and Navi? Have you looked into ibook author?

Comment by Hanna Shekhter on September 20, 2012 at 9:06pm: We are definitely using the iPads for all subjects. For example, he Navi teacher sends pdf's of certain pages to the students where they open it up in an annotation app (like GoodReader or Notability) so students can highlight and write notes on the sides of the page. We use flashcard apps to help with translating psukim in Chumash and other subjects. We are starting to get some of the Tanach and Siddur apps! Can't wait.

Comment by Tova Taragin on September 22, 2012 at 8:55pm: Have you downloaded the free app U'velechtecha baderech. It is truly, kol haTorah kula, with mefarshim and it is an excellent supplementary resource in the Judaics classroom. (it is either ON your way in english but you can type the title in hebrew in the app store and get to it. It is a very large file and takes a while to download, but definitely worthwhile. Another one is Pocket Torah. It sings every passuk in trop. The beauty is, that it is slow. We have a dyslexic student who found this helped her learn Chumash because she was able to hear the passuk, as opposed to having to struggle reading it.

Comment by Deena Wertman on September 23, 2012 at 4:16pm: Hanna,

I am so impressed by how successful your school has been so far in implementing 1:1 iPad program. I also have the opportunity to pilot this program in my 4th grade classroom. Because they are young and haven't used iPads yet, I am slowly introducing it to my students, one app and subject area at a time. It is taking time to introduce certain apps and create routines with them. I hope that by the end of the year, it will be fully integrated, but for now, baby step it is! Do you have any specific apps that you can share that your teachers have been successful with? I would love suggestions!

One app that I love using is Nearpod- http://www.nearpod.com/

It's a great app where a teacher create a presentation (on a regular computer) and then the presentation can be uploaded on the students' iPads. The teacher controls the slides, so no kids can look ahead or go back. The presentation can include still frames, videos, interactive polls, ques and answers, and quizzes. You can also share the results of a poll with the students as they come though. I highly recommend you check it out!

Comment by Elyse Haber on September 23, 2012 at 5:48pm: Our school has just invested in a cart of ipads and so far they have been sitting in the cart! I don't think we have any professional development planned so I guess I'm researching on my own. Hanna, your post has encouraged me to give it a try. I did come across a site that I thought was interesting for teachers.

http://www.teachhub.com/20-amazing-ipad-apps-educators

I'm looking forward to learning about all different kinds of technology in my Ed Tech course as well as exploring what I ca do with the cart of ipads!

Comment by Amy Bond on September 23, 2012 at 6:48pm: Our school is getting ready to launch IPADs as well. I have utilized the following link as a guideline for setting up the restrictions for students. My principal didn't want any restrictions, but I could not live with that responsibility. I wanted to give the students a clear understanding that this is a tool, not a toy.

http://www.techchef4u.com/?p=1615

Comment by Hanna Shekhter on September 24, 2012 at 8:53pm: Deena - I love nearpod! One of our Math teachers showed their presentation using it on the iPads at back to School night to our parents and they were blown away! It was funny because he put up an question and not every parent got the correct answer:)

Elyse-I am so excited for you and hope that you try out that iPad cart. I highly suggest taking a look at www.simplek12.com site. I watched many webinars, mostly free, and there is a suite of webinars just for iPad programs. It was very reasonably priced. I used it for PD for our teachers during faculty orientation.

Amy-We restricted many of the same things as in your link. It was also helpful to remove itunes and the app store.

Comment by Hanna Shekhter on September 24, 2012 at 8:54pm: Tova-U'velechtecha baderech is on the list for our next syncing date! The Judaic teachers are really excited about it. Thanks!

Comment by Aryeh Silver on October 4, 2012 at 10:16am: Our school is also in the process of incorporating IPads in the classrooms. I have been fortunate enough to have been given one prior to this decision so I have had time to play with it and become more familiar with some of the apps and features. I liked the way your school had a formal training for all the teachers to understand the basics and necessities before it went to the students. ]

What type of safety features does your school have for them? Is there any on-going training for teachers?

3-2-1 Takeoff!!! The 1:1 iPad Pilot Program Begins!

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