In the past few weeks our school has committed to the
development of a one to one iPad program for students and staff. Communicating
and educating the key players in our district to move in this direction has
taken some time. The first step was developing the capacity to have all of our
textbooks online, which we have been purchasing paper books as well as the
online versions for the last four years. Developing the necessary ability of
the staff to use technology in the classroom, with laptops, whiteboards, LCD
projects and speakers. Now that we have established a baseline of technology,
we need to take the next steps to prepare for a complete one to one environment.
Over the next few weeks, several administrators and teachers
will be completing sight visits to some local school districts in the area that
have one to one programs whether it is laptop or iPad environments. The purpose
of these visits will be to develop a professional development strategy for teachers,
students, and parents to educate all of our stakeholders on the use and benefit
of a one to one environment. Included in this process will be the coast savings
that will be associated with this new environment; reduced costs of textbooks, reduction
in printers, printer cartridges, paper, copier costs, and lost teaching time from
our current mobile laptop program.
Currently, we have purchased an iPad2 for each of our staff
members to begin the process of experimenting with different apps and functions
in the classroom. Our current plan is to develop a list of apps that we will
need to use on all student and teachers iPads for the next school year. Also,
this is the first step in developing an iPad Academy for all staff members,
students and parents. As we move along through this process, I will blog about
each step of our process so that others can comment on what they see working in
their districts and to learn from our experiences.
