Five days of 1-to-1 learning...and counting By: Unknown No comments

Today marked the fifth day of 1-to-1 learning for 9th grade students at Saint Peter High School. I'm writing this reflection from Week 1 based on the premise of no news is good news.

Word on the street around school is things are going pretty smoothly with our 9th grade iPads. Except for a twenty minute time period this morning, most concerns or issues have involved a few iBoss MDM configuration issues with a few student iPads, but nothing overwhelming or a barrier to using the iPads for learning. The only glitch or potential snafu so far lasted only twenty minutes this morning when our firewall started blocking the iBoss MDM proxy that our 9th grade iPads use for filtered Internet access on and off campus. Once the firewall was adjusted to allow the proxy our 9th grade students and their iPads were back online.

In addition to new iPads this fall we also have a new Aruba wireless network that was installed over the summer. The Aruba network is proving to be solid and reliable, which is reassuring considering that we spent most of last school year frustrated with a flaky and unreliable wireless network from a different vendor, who shall remain nameless.

Much of my time over the first five days of the school year has involved working individually with teachers to assist them with using Reflector to connect/mirror their iPad onto their computer, which is connected to their classroom projector. Other than on one older computer that seemed to freeze up, Reflector has been great. Each day more teachers are using it and exploring how to utilize projecting their iPad for more than just a lecture. One of our math teachers today was really excited about his classroom experience today when more than one student was able to mirror their iPads onto the classroom projector at the same time to be able to compare and contrast ways and steps for solving problems.

After the first five days of 1-to-1 I'm pleased to say that iPads are being used to engage students and expand learning opportunities in ways that previously were not possible in our school.