iPad pilot

Hello!

I had the opportunity to implement iPads in an elementary and middle school setting. A few things that I found were important:

• For middle-upper grades, having keyboard cases is a must.
• If you haven't done so already, make sure your school has a registered Apple account so that when you purchase the iPads they automatically enrolled in Apple School Manager (ASM).
• Once you have an account established with Apple, you can set up your school's ASM. ASM has many features and tools including setting up managed Apple IDs for your students and staff, setting up classes, and other management features.
• You'll want set up an account with either Cisco Meraki or Jamf. These are third party Mobile Device Managers (MDM) that work in tandem with ASM to deploy restrictions and other mobile management features for the iPads.
• For your pilot, assigning each student a managed Apple ID through ASM and assigning that ID/Profile to their iPad. There's a little bit of a learning curve on the MDM side, but it just takes time. Once you have that set up, you can push out apps to devices, updates, etc.
• With your school apple account, and through ASM, you can purchase apps. These apps are then made available to push to your school iPads that are managed through an MDM. You can have the App Store unavailable on school iPads and only push out school purchased apps through your MDM. You can also have a managed App Store through your MDM so students/staff can download apps on their devices already purchased by the school.

When I went through it, it was a lot of trial and error and learning, but it was a cool experience. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Hi Rachel,

I completed a trail iPad rollout in my school and I am happy to help. Please feel free to contact me via twitter at @catherinem23.

Catherine

When piloting a new initiative, evidence of success is critical. Effective data collection and action research can be tough to organize (for me, at least!). So, I lean on the digital book Research for Educators to help. It’s authored by Apple Education and includes several research-based studies you can adapt to your unique needs:

1. Student Attitudes Towards Learning
2. Student Engagement
3. Student Achievement
4. Student Creativity
5. Student Experience with Learning Initiative
6. Deeper Learning
7. Creative Environment

I really recommend checking this book out and using the data tracking templates included to plan, conduct, and share what you’ve learned in your pilot. Good luck!

One of the key strategies that I have used is to make sure that staff have iPads at least six months before we start the pilot. You also have to assume that they come to an iPad environment thinking that it's a laptop replacement – so you need to go through a process of "re-imagining" what work looks like in an iPad workflow.