One-to-One Feedback

GabeShack
Valued Contributor III

Hey all,
We are exploring a full one to one solution (and have been for some time) and I was looking for feedback.

Do you currently have a one to one and if so is it with different devices for different grade levels?

What was the hardest part of rolling it out?

Did you have help from Apple or Jamf supporting your initial roll out?

How did you finance the roll out?

What insurance did you use if any?

What content filtering service do you use for your student use devices?

Do you still bind your computers?

Thanks for any feed back you can provide!

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools
3 REPLIES 3

Chris_Hafner
Valued Contributor II

Hey Gabe, get a hold of me some time and we'll chat again! (chafner@brewsteracademy.org). To answer your questions specifically:

• Do you currently have a one to one and if so is it with different devices for different grade levels?
Being currently 9 through Post Grad no, planning on a k-12, it would be iPads through 6th grade, then moving onto laptops.

What was the hardest part of rolling it out?
Training the faculty! Seriously, not joking here. The technical side of the rollout can be handled in LOTs of different ways. We're all BYOD but used to be school owned. We've run the gamut of deployments and I would love to talk through your challenges.

Did you have help from Apple or Jamf supporting your initial roll out?
Apple, but we rolled out initially in 1993. Don't worry about that though, I'd relentlessly use resources from both companies.

How did you finance the roll out?
We're private so we rolled it into fees. However, I've worked with a number of public school systems. Often times, it's just about getting a number of successful school board meetings. If you have taxpayer buy-in, you're golden!

What insurance did you use if any?
We kind of self-funded that. Set aside money and set agreed-upon student responsibilities. Not that uncommon from any take-home Chromebook program. In your spot, I would make sure to purchase AppleCare+ into any purchase agreement with Apple as well as a decent repair budget. For our part, I would do anything to avoid charging the students $ for repairs. Rather, I would prefer to treat it as a disciplinary issue. That is kind of idealistic I know. I've made several plans for several schools that all have different concerns here.

What content filtering service do you use for your student use devices?
A number of basic ACLs in our Firewall. Again, we're 9-post grad so we don't really pretend that we're going to block everything. In lower grades I would probably proxy the heck out of it. Maybe something like a Lightspeed if you can still do that without their MDM.

Do you still bind your computers?
Never have, never will

Thanks for any feed back you can provide!

anickless
Contributor II

Do you currently have a one to one and if so is it with different devices for different grade levels?
We had (have) two schools k -4 and 5 -8 one to one, Apps are the only different thing between grade levels (These schools are iPads)
What was the hardest part of rolling it out?
First time roll-out last September we re-worked what we did with labeling and setup so it took longer for staff to get use to it.

Did you have help from Apple or Jamf supporting your initial roll out?
No, but we have been doing iPad roll-outs for a long time and if this is your first one then for sure reach out to them

How did you finance the roll out?
We are funded by the government and the budget supplied via the school board so...
What insurance did you use if any?
None since they don't take them home.

What content filtering service do you use for your student use devices?
Routers
Do you still bind your computers?
Yes.

tdilossi
Contributor

Hi @gshackney we have a k-12 1:1 using ipads for all students, all of our teachers have an iPad and a laptop, and all of our administrators have a desktop, laptop and an iPad. about 10,000 devices in total. Our laptops are bound to AD. We had at one point an apple support person, but she more or less just observed, didn't help too much. We collect a technology fee of $30 per student, and pay for replacement devices from that money. We initially had applecare for the iPads, but found a company that offers repairs for us, and we actually purchased devices in excess of what we need, and do a swap out for all broken devices, so students are not without a device for more than a day or two tops for the repairs. We are only content filtered in-house, when they are at home they are not filtered. YET... This is planned for this summer, depending on COVID restrictions. We need to build our VPN policies.

We had a lot of public involvement with our board meetings to get all of this approved for funding. It happened to work in with our regular computer upgrade schedule, so we put off new computers for one year while we purchased and prepped iPads, we eliminated elementary labs, and went with student laptop carts instead, and overall reduced the number of laptops in the district, so in the long run it was a little more than normal but we had the public's buy in, so it went through. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.

Tracy