TechieTeacher5280

For those of you who follow my blog, you may have noticed that I have not necessarily been the biggest fan of iPads in education. I know, I know, this is in stark contrast to seemingly 99.9% of others in my field, but let me explain. While the iPad is very kid friendly and has loads of great apps for kids, it has not been school friendly due to Apple's insistence that the iPad is a personal device and as such is optimized for 1:1 use. So much so, that trying to use iPads with multiple students sharing the same device in a school setting has been extremely cumbersome due to iCloud issues, app installation complications, and saved student work snafus. And while 1:1 implementation may sounds like a great solution to these issues, due to its price point, 1:1 implementation of iPads in schools is not realistic in most situations. Even district-wide 1:1 implementation of Chromebooks, which are significantly cheaper, has not been financially feasible where I work. So this is why I...

Our school district recently deployed laptops to all freshmen at two different high schools. In order to help support our teachers successfully use the laptops, our team of TechTrainers has been spending lots of time in the buildings helping students and teachers with their new laptops. While visiting a teacher's classroom, I heard her telling students that their work was due electronically by 7:30 the next morning. She told them that she would not accept late work for any reason, so they better not leave things to the last minute, lest their Internet connection crash or some other disaster strike. I asked her later what she would do if she received a corrupted document. In that case, she told me, she would allow the student to fix the issue and resubmit the assignment. Seems fair, right?