The Impact of a 1-1
Initiative at Henderson Middle School:
Is the Benefit Worth
the Cost?
Scott Hagedorn
Lamar University
Money
is tight in all districts these days, and the need to provide students access
to study guides, web-tutorials, and other digital help is at an all time
high. It is therefore important
for schools to have an idea of what type of improvements switching to a one to
one initiative will bring the school.
After all, if this initiative is to be successful, you will need
improvements on your network to support the increased amount of devices and
you’ll also have to “consider the personnel available” (Salerno & Vonhof,
2011) and give them the proper development they need.
Henderson
Middle School faced these decisions at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school
year. Staff members had created
web-tutorials and made them available to the students, but a number of students
had no web-access at home. The
community embraced the tutorials and other teachers also started making more
content available, but the separation of those who could and couldn’t access
supplemental materials became more apparent.
The
previous year, the technology committee had proposed allowing students to bring
their own devices to school. The
technology department had raised some concerns about being able to handle the
increase in the number of devices, but the demand from parents asking the
district to allow students to bring their devices became the ultimate push to
move forward. Immediately at the
beginning of 2011-2012, iPads, iPods, cell phones, laptops, and other mobile
devices made their way into the secondary levels of education. With the increase in the number of
devices came the increase in the amount of digital supplemental material for
the students.
This
led the administration to ask the question of what can we do to close this gap,
and how can we get all of our students access to the materials we have
created? A committee of the
district principals, superintendent, vice-superintendent, technology director,
and business manage met to discuss this topic. Around this time, Apple announced their plans to enter the
textbook market. The iPad would
allow the students to be able to access material in and out of the classroom,
as well as give them the ability to download any study materials they might
want to use at home. This changed
our technology direction and forced us to see if this was feasible.
With
the iPad came the vision of giving an iPad to every sixth grade student for the
2012-2013 school year. The goal of
this is to improve the education of our students by giving them access to more
materials, up to date resources, and tools than ever before as well as giving
the teacher the ability to have access to more resources and tools than ever
before. In order to achieve this,
we must first give our staff the professional development they need to further
their comfort with technology in the classroom as well as introduce them to
using the iPad to find materials for their classroom.
The
immediate question we had to face was “are our teachers ready to teach in a one
to one environment?” Our teachers
were not ready, so this led us to look at what steps we need to take to give
our teachers the professional development they need. We decided to implement the training plan we had used across
the board during the school year and create a training plan that allowed us to
teach to certain skill levels.
There would be multiple classes aimed at a beginner, intermediate, and
advanced skill level. This would
allow the teacher to learn at a level they were comfortable with.
Following
this question, we had to examine our current infrastructure to determine what
upgrades we would need to handle the increased number of iPads in our
district. After some tests and
reviewing the infrastructure, we realized certain parts of the middle school
would not be able to handle the amount of devices in its current state. In order to get this to work, the
district would be forced to increase the number of access points and improve
the wiring on the east side of the building.
Last,
but not least, Hardin-Jefferson wanted to know how they could improve on
results other districts might have had.
If they were to do this at Henderson Middle School, how could they have
more success than schools who had started their initiative in 2011-2012? After reading articles that stated
things about the iPad use such as having “an increase in engagement when using
the iPad, (but) there was not a corresponding rise in achievement” (Sheppard,
2011), we wanted to take steps to make sure we had more success.
One
thing we noticed was a failure to prepare the teachers to use the iPad in the
classroom. Although Salerno &
Vonhof (2011) mentioned that we should prepare the teachers, there has been no
evidence in the schools that they had properly prepared their teachers for use
of the iPad. In many ways, this
was similar to the model most schools used with computers. Teachers were given computers, but not
the skills they needed to implement them.
Because of this, many teachers were ill prepared to use computers with
their students, and the success of the programs suffered because of this. This conversation helped our
administration team decide to focus on giving the teachers in Hardin-Jefferson
the skills they need to be successful and comfortable on the first day of the
initiative. By preparing our teachers
to use iPads, and giving them the tools and resources they need to be
successful, there is great hope we can be more successful than our predecessors
with this initiative.
Once
the administration decided on a course of action, we had to inform others. The first group we informed was the
middle school. The principal,
Melanie Nunez, informed the staff that the decision had been made to head this
direction. Melanie informed the
staff that this was the direction education is going. She also informed the staff that everyone was going to have
to start learning how to teach with these devices and that professional
development would be provided.
After this, I also met with the sixth grade teachers and started showing
them how we could use the iPad in their subject. I wanted their input on what they liked, and what they did
not like so we could modify the software on the iPad itself. After this meeting, we also set up
several iPads with apps we had looked at and discussed so that the teachers
could take the device home and practice with it.
The
next group we needed to inform was the parents of the students, parents, and
community members. At the
technology showcase on April 17, 2012, parents, students, and community members
received the official acknowledgement that this project was going to
happen. The administration also
encouraged the audience to feel free to ask questions if they had any. That evening, we had no questions, but
we did have a lot of excited parents who were encouraging.
Some
community members have asked us to give presentations in their workplace to
help with funding. We have done
presentations at several local businesses, and they have all expressed interest
in helping us out.
Since
the announcement, we have been putting all of our pieces in place. As I mentioned, we’ve had to find
funding for this initiative. The
funding for this project has come from several sources. The major chunk of our money has been
through our IMA funding. Last year
we had not spent all of our material allotment, so this year we used that money
as well as this year’s allotment towards the purchase of iPads. The iPad has also allowed us to use
this device for what we purchased multiple devices in the past to do. For instance, the iPad 2 has a camera
on it, so we don’t need to spend money on flip cameras for student
projects. As Reed pointed out,
“students found that the iPad allowed them to avoid printing thousands of pages
during the semester” (Marmarelli & Ringle, 2011). By using iPads, we can
cut costs of printing materials. We have also sought donations from local
businesses. As mentioned before,
we have had presented at several large companies in our area and they have
expressed interest in giving us funding.
Last but not least, we have used our school technology budget to also
help with this cost.
The
other major portion of our organizing has been putting the training piece into
place. We have changed the
technology training we had been offering to start including a lot more iPad
presentations. Not only that, but
me and my staff have been going to each campus asking what our teachers like
and what they want improvements on and we’ve been trying to help them out. I have met with our sixth grade staff
almost on a daily basis to see what programs they like and what programs they
think are rubbish. I have also
tried to have weekly meetings where we go over basic features of the iPad as
well as giving them ideas on how to run a class where every student has an
iPad.
My
staff has also been downloading apps to determine if this would be a viable
option for our teachers. This
staff has been instrumental in listening to our teacher needs and trying to
meet their needs. Not only that,
but they have also done a lot of research on iPads. They are scouring the Internet, looking through online
magazines, and scouring the Tec-Sig and TCEA list to find any information on
schools who have done one to one initiatives.
We
have also had to really investigate how to secure our network and protect our
students. Since “schools are
entrusted with ensuring that each and every student is able to learn in a safe
environment, free from danger both from within and from without” (Salerno &
Vonhof, 2011), we had to find a way to make sure we could guarantee this. We started looking at what we had used
in the past, we looked to see if we might use Apple Remote Desktop, but we were
not very happy with the end result.
We then looked at the Casper software and realized we could do some
monitoring of devices with that.
Our filter already catches what the state requires us to, but we wanted
to make sure we can offer teachers more support since they are not used to
teaching with every student having an iPad on their desktop.
We
have also looked into making sure our students can still work if something
should happen to the iPad. We have
spoken to several insurance providers, looked at warranty plans with Best Buy
and Apple, and have met with several educational outlets to discuss our
options. With insurance we have
different methods of ensuring that products can be replaced quickly, as well as
helping reduce any cost to the school.
We also spoke with schools in Maine who have ran a 1-1 initiative in
their district to steal some of their ideas. Our current plan is to have insurance on the devices. If the device is broken, we will send
the machine off to get fixed, and in the meantime they will borrow one of our
devices. The student will not be
allowed to take the device home, but they can use it during school. We are also planning on allowing our
students to purchase the devices after four years if the student has taken care
of the machine. The people we
spoke to at King Middle School in Portland, Maine said that this gave their
students motivation to take good care of the device.
Student
devices would also have some defaults that we set up. The devices will have some parental settings placed on the
devices. There will be
restrictions preventing students from putting age-restricted materials on the
device as well as preventing students from in-app purchases as well. Not only this, but we will also
heavily use Google Docs and store their information on the cloud. This limits the amount of personal
information on the devices and also frees up the amount of server space we have
with student information.
When
setting up a strategy to lead this project forward, we focused on two things at
once. The first things we focused
on was getting our teachers the professional development they needed while we
worked on improving the infrastructure of our network. Our needs assessment came from the
technology leaders on each campus, as well as through interviews with our sixth
grade staff. Since the sixth grade
was our first focus, we decided on spending the most amount of time with this
group for the rest of this school year.
We also wanted to make sure that these teachers received their iPads as
soon as possible, and we wanted to start integrating the iPads into their teaching
style. Although, “it is imperative
that schools provide the tools and support necessary to alter pedagogy”
(Salerno & Vonhof, 2011), it is also imperative to have the subject driving
the technology and not the other way around. While we were working with the teachers, we also made plans
to purchase an increase in bandwidth and make our wireless more robust.
As
we moved forward, we had to resolve conflict with teachers who were offended
that we chose the sixth grade over their grade. We had to explain to the teachers why we chose this group,
and give them an overview of why we chose that grade. We built consensus by sharing our goal of going 1-1 with the
entire district in 2013-2014, and explaining that we need them to support the
sixth grade staff so it’s a success and we can move the program across the
board. By sharing how the sixth
grade plan would allow them the opportunity to teach with the iPad too, we met
less resistance.
One
of the main goals we set out to fix was making sure our students no matter what
their home life was like would have the same access to study materials as
everyone else. The iPad allows our
students to download the same study guides, video study guides, and digital
textbooks that the students in our BYOT initiative had access too. The iPad can level the playing field
with the available resources our district has to offer.
We
have also noticed another positive advantage switching to iPads with the weight
difference. We had read that nursing students in Korea were carrying “medical
reference books electronically instead of having to carry 5kg books around”
(Meurant, 2010). After a student
fell down backwards due to the weight of his backpack, we realized the iPad
would be less weight than a student carrying multiple books.
Finally, this project will serve the
needs of our special needs students more than any technology plan we have had
in the past. With special
education software on the iPad, we can save a lot of money by combining
previously separate devices into one.
Programs such as Sonoflex, which now costs $200, can replace stand-alone
devices that were up to $5000 by itself.
Unlike those old stand-alone devices, the iPad can be transported easily
allowing children who have low auditory ability the gift of communicating with
others. With impressive zooming
abilities, text to speech features, Braille options and other vision options,
our students with vision difficulties can now participate in class like never
before. These students will have
an iPad just like every other student in the class, and this allows them the
same opportunities as everyone else.
References
Marmarelli, T.
& Ringle, M. (2011). The Reed College iPad Study. Portland, Oregon, USA: Reed
College.
Meurant, R.C.
(2010). iPad tablet computing to foster Korean EFL digital literacy. International Journal of u- and e- Service,
Science and Technology, 3(4), 49-62.
Salerno, M. A.,
& Vonhof, M. (2011, December 14). Launching an iPad 1-to-1 Program: A
Primer -- THE Journal. THE Journal: Technological Horizons in Education -- THE
Journal. Retrieved March 21, 2012, from http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/12/14/launching-an-ipad-1-to-1-program-a-primer.aspx
Sheppard, D.
(2011). Reading with iPads – the difference makes a difference. Education Today, (11), 12-15.
