1:1 device solutions - What issues did you face?

[rogerdnixon]

I do like the idea of chromebooks, however having ourselves quite firmly engrained in Office 365, is there any drawbacks to us not using G suite? Can they work as/or nearly as seamlessly with Office 365?

 

What's the management like?

 

The management of Chromebooks is blissfully simple - but you do need G Suite to do this. I often say the longest bit is unboxing the device. However, all the O365 Web Apps will work fine on a Chromebooks and even the Android versions of Office Apps (on compatible devices).

[mrbios]

The management of Chromebooks is blissfully simple - but you do need G Suite to do this. I often say the longest bit is unboxing the device. However, all the O365 Web Apps will work fine on a Chromebooks and even the Android versions of Office Apps (on compatible devices).

 

Thanks, sounds like i'd need to get a chromebook and have a play to see what the possibilities are.

[caffrey]

Everything that @pinemarten said + never mix with BYOD and a set of school owned "loaners" as it's a total uncontrollable utter nightmare

 

Biggest issue for us is obsolescence, be prepared to replace hardware and the high cost that goes with it, but on the plus side the iPads are quite reliable.

 

I'm trying to recommend the use of Chromebooks now, the iPads are mainly used for "research" and a keyboard would be much more beneficial - but it may be to late to u-turn (The iPads were not my idea in the first place) imo iPads are just not worth it and Apple are really slow producing things for education - Google are pushing a lot more than any of the other vendors in this regard

[mrbios]

Biggest issue for us is obsolescence, be prepared to replace hardware and the high cost that goes with it, but on the plus side the iPads are quite reliable.

 

Do you find this the case because the school own the devices?

 

If parents paid and owned them fully at the end of a students time at the school, I'm guessing obsolescence wouldn't be an issue? As 5 years will be the oldest they'll ever be?

 

Which springs up another question....6th form. The leasing arrangements with parents paying and owning the device at the end, I've seen as a Y7-Y11 thing, 5 years is a fairly typical lifespan for a device, so would we just expect the 6th formers to bring their device back to use for those two years, or the school own devices for them, or something else? Then you've got 6th formers that start here from other schools etc. So many more questions keep springing up the further i look down this rabbit hole.

[zag]

1:1 devices are just a waste of time in my opinion. There is absultely no evidence that they improve teaching or results. Infact I would think they would add as a distraction from proper learning unless you find some way to lock them down massively.

 

We started to go down the path but had so many breakages and devices soon became out of date it just didnt make sense.

 

We have BYOD in the 6th form and boarding which works well, but the other years have amble access to computers around school.

[caffrey]

5 years is pushing it, 4 at max - Apple have planned obsolescence built in (E.g. earlier devices can't have latest IoS etc.) we haven't ran into issues with this yet but I can see it becoming an issue as devices get older.

 

"Do you find this the case because the school own the devices?"

 

I think the staff that decided to do this didn't take into account renewal costs every few years (plus breakages) It's not cheap

[RLR]

Interesting list!

 

How do you all deal with printing? Can you separate which printers they can see depending on where the students are in the school?

 

How do you have your wireless setup in terms of DHCP/vlans to cope with the quantity of devices? Do you segregate your site to keep vlans down to a minimum size at all for the wireless? Presumably if i had 1200-1500 devices connecting one massive vlan isn't going to look too pretty!

 

I must admit, a lot of the issues you have appear to be down to the way your school has allowed them to basically be 100% personal devices? The way i've been told about it being done is that the school still have control until the student leaves, making MDM a requirement, restrictions a requirement, set app restrictions when in school etc.

Yea, we're a 1:1 school where the school own the devices and we don't really get these issues. We still get quite a few breakages but we charge a fee for each broken iPad which gets higher the more times the student breaks them.

Charging cables have always been an issue. The lightning cables are so fragile and start breaking at the ends after a year or so. We have loads of plugs but are forever buying new cables which students have to pay for.

 

Lesson management issues caused by student distraction. [/Quote]This can be helped with Apple Classrooms.

 

Students constantly attempting to bypass filtering by using VPN apps etc.[/Quote]With Jamf Pro you can create profiles to only allow certain apps. This stops students downloading VPN apps. You can also use the firewall to block most ports which are used by VPNs. Some VPNs use standard ports so not possible to block all.

Another thing that might help with this Self Service from Jamf Pro. You can then remove the app store and students can only download apps you put into Self Service.

 

- Conflicts with parents regarding acceptable use at home of iPads which many feel were forced upon them by peer pressure. [/Quote]We get this a little. Not very much but we have had times where students have been made to leave their ipads at school. I think the use of Configuration profiles to block all apps except the ones we choose has helped with this.

 

- Inability to force MDM solution to stay on iPad , unable to use Configurator due to parent/school ownership issue arising from lease purchase arrangement. [/Quote]I believe this is caused because of the shared ownership between school and student. MDM's allow you to enforce an MDM profile which can't be removed (DEP).

 

Students locking themselves out due to forgotten passcode. [/Quote]Get this occasionally but it's just the same as a student/staff forgetting passwords.

 

- File handling issues caused by Apple IOS restrictions and practices. [/Quote]Yea, this is quite annoying. We try to encourage everyone to stick with doing things in Google. Although, IOS 11 does have a new Files app that is kind of giving a file explorer to ipads bit isn't great (Yet?).

 

Inability to access network resources or print documents. [/Quote]There are ways to set both these up on a network although we haven't done it. We want to promote a paperless classroom so don't want to give staff and students the ability to print from their iPads.

The access network resources you can use an app such as Foldr https://foldr.io/.

 

- Lack of suitable ongoing teacher training to enable full and appropriate usage of iPads in lessons . [/Quote]

We've employed 2 people (that are also teachers) to help with this. The do CPD sessions and offer sessions for help. They've created workflows for staff to use. We still get some staff that don't use the iPads much but some subjects don't have apps appropriate for them. Google Classroom has helped a lot.

 

 

 

How do you have your wireless setup in terms of DHCP/vlans to cope with the quantity of devices? Do you segregate your site to keep vlans down to a minimum size at all for the wireless? Presumably if i had 1200-1500 devices connecting one massive vlan isn't going to look too pretty! [/Quote]

Our sites are spread out quite a bit. The most we have on one site is 500 devices so we have one VLAN setup which students and staff connect to using 802.1x radius authentication. We use Meru as our Wifi solution which covers everywhere. Don't get many complaints at all about it.

Edited June 21, 2017 by RLR

[pinemarten]

Not allowing students full control of devices, didn't you write an AUP for this scheme?

DEP is essential for any large 1:1 scheme

Did you buy Meraki?

 

I also notice you mentioned a lease purchase scheme, I would presume this was direct with parents as it's illegal for state schools to sign up for this kind of lease?

 

Yes, students do sign an AUP (and break it with little consequence)

It's the free Meraki version.

The legal side was considered , payments are processed by a 3rd party I believe passed to us as a charitable donation or something similar to avoid legal pitfalls ..

[mrbios]

In terms of iPads, what happens if a parent opts out due to them already owning one, and them wanting to use that? Can you just take the serial number, add it to DEP and then release it once they're done at the school?

 

Presumably if you had the parents sign something so that they understood the consequences of using their own device that would be possible, as long as outside of school hours it could still operate as a personal device?

[AlanD]

I hear what you say about the problems with 1:1 .... and many of those problems have solutions....printing, device management, etc ...and enforcing some case/cover can help mitigate against damage....and yes there needs to be (a lot) of staff support and encouragement because they can be reluctant if not not hostile to making good use of devices. BUT....and its a really important but....far too many students leave school with diabolically poor ICT skills (which are not the same as being able to take a picture and share it with snapchat...or for that matter composing a short piece of text on a word processor or presentation package). Asking any year 11 student to total a column of marks in a spreadsheet will convince you of that. Ask them to create a vocab test where english words are presented in one column and french words are typed in the next and a tick or cross is to automatically appear will almost certainly be beyond everyone - and that includes the most of the ICT teachers. Using computers needs to be part a parcel of each and every subject in school (a serious omission by those who designed the current "programming" based curriculum). And you can't haul classes off to ICT suites every time you need to use devices for 10 minutes in a lesson...nor indeed get them all out the front to collect and power up a device from a trolley. They need to be on the desks...and be a natural part of lessons.

[mrbios]

I hear what you say about the problems with 1:1 .... and many of those problems have solutions....printing, device management, etc ...and enforcing some case/cover can help mitigate against damage....and yes there needs to be (a lot) of staff support and encouragement because they can be reluctant if not not hostile to making good use of devices. BUT....and its a really important but....far too many students leave school with diabolically poor ICT skills (which are not the same as being able to take a picture and share it with snapchat...or for that matter composing a short piece of text on a word processor or presentation package). Asking any year 11 student to total a column of marks in a spreadsheet will convince you of that. Ask them to create a vocab test where english words are presented in one column and french words are typed in the next and a tick or cross is to automatically appear will almost certainly be beyond everyone - and that includes the most of the ICT teachers. Using computers needs to be part a parcel of each and every subject in school (a serious omission by those who designed the current "programming" based curriculum). And you can't haul classes off to ICT suites every time you need to use devices for 10 minutes in a lesson...nor indeed get them all out the front to collect and power up a device from a trolley. They need to be on the desks...and be a natural part of lessons.

 

I agree with this. On the flipside though I'm also concerned about the use of things like ipads because you're learning within an "app" you're not learning to type on a proper keyboard, or using programs you would be using in the real world. I feel like app based learning is perfect for primary education, but i have my concerns (and these are personal, as a parent, rather than anything that would go into the decision of what path we go down here...where i hold little sway besides my technical grumbles anyway) that app based learning isn't the great teaching tool it's made out to be. If anything, i think for something a student will eventually own, something that will be useful in every class and follow on that usefulness through to university...laptops are still the perfect fit. Obviously there's a whole host of issues behind those being 1:1 though not to mention the portability of them. They're also considered old fashioned now.

 

Maybe I'm old fashioned in my thinking there, maybe I'm wrong. Like someone said earlier in the thread though...there's no real proof yet that having a device like an iPad actually increases learning potential.

[Brimstone]

1:1 devices are just a waste of time in my opinion. There is absultely no evidence that they improve teaching or results. Infact I would think they would add as a distraction from proper learning unless you find some way to lock them down massively.

 

We started to go down the path but had so many breakages and devices soon became out of date it just didnt make sense.

 

We have BYOD in the 6th form and boarding which works well, but the other years have amble access to computers around school.

 

**sighs**

 

I bet your BYOD devices are just for internet and no actual work is done on them so not a real BYOD

 

@mrbios These links may help you with research for this although these are all iPad

 

http://www.stran.ac.uk/media/media,756133,en.pdf

The de Ferrers Academy - Best ever results

This Bolton school was failing – until it gave each pupil an iPod - Telegraph

Can an iPad help schoolchildren get better grades? - Telegraph

https://www.cardiffmet.ac.uk/education/research/Documents/iPadImplementation2014.pdf

[pinemarten]

It seems to me that you have to invest 100% in the teaching side of it (including getting staff on-side) or it's going to fall short of being a full-on success.

 

You will still have all of the drawbacks to the 1:1 scheme (breakages, abuse, ownership issues etc) whatever happens - but only IF the school is prepared to incorporate the devices properly into the curriculum can the benefits become apparent.

And it occurs to me that the drawbacks are easily measurable (% of breakages, number of abuse incidents, time/staff to manage them etc. ) , whilst the benefit to students is not so easily quantified - attainment figures are subject to so many other factors over a given period of time, and many iPad suited tasks (eg. video projects) can also be done on PC or Mac .

So, it's quite hard to justify it on paper.

 

That said, I have to concur that 1:1 is a good idea in principle and as a few have said it's almost a necessary approach to delivering certain cross curricular IT skills nowadays - but you have to do it properly and there will be still many tasks needing a PC/Mac or laptop...which of course form the IT tools future employment for students.

[Brimstone]

Yes, students do sign an AUP (and break it with little consequence)

It's the free Meraki version.

The legal side was considered , payments are processed by a 3rd party I believe passed to us as a charitable donation or something similar to avoid legal pitfalls ..

 

So you decided to go with a massive technology program in your school and relied on some FOC MDM, that has zero support from the vendor. Good forward thinking there.

[Brimstone]

It seems to me that you have to invest 100% in the teaching side of it (including getting staff on-side) or it's going to fall short of being a full-on success.

 

You will still have all of the drawbacks to the 1:1 scheme (breakages, abuse, ownership issues etc) whatever happens - but only IF the school is prepared to incorporate the devices properly into the curriculum can the benefits become apparent.

And it occurs to me that the drawbacks are easily measurable (% of breakages, number of abuse incidents, time/staff to manage them etc. ) , whilst the benefit to students is not so easily quantified - attainment figures are subject to so many other factors over a given period of time, and many iPad suited tasks (eg. video projects) can also be done on PC or Mac .

So, it's quite hard to justify it on paper

.

 

" It seems to me that you have to invest 100% in the teaching side of it"

 

Do you actually live in the real world or some IT Tower????

 

You work at a School, yes, what do schools do? Let me think a second..they teach and educate children, I think that answers your question yeah?

 

Sorry for shouting but....

 

THIS WILL FAIL WITHOUT;

 

SLT on board, with their vision for learning in the school

Team of teachers who will lead this project and support to build other team leaders

Parents Engaged

Regular Teacher CPD

Community Engaged, parents, PTA, Governors

Measurement of how technology is transforming education

Students engagement ( yes they are important as well)

 

Whilst putting in an acceptable AUP forget all the rubbish about data protection, safe guarding etc

 

There are plenty of very successful schools whilst not ignoring these issues have ignored all the sole called "safeguarding" solutions from companies, it's licence to print money for them or so called other forums on this site scaring people about data protection.

 

Believe me you do not need to waste money on this.

 

Concentrate on software that enables, engages and allows students to love learning, I'm sure there are lots of cynics here that think this is " not their job " but you work in somewhere that is about learning NOT about IT.

 

End of rant

[pinemarten]

Thanks for your 'rants' Mr. Brimstone - I know insomnia can be a terrible thing (even in the real world)

[edgingtonwem]

We are a primary school and we are starting our 1:1 Ipad scheme in the start of September we have had a 1:1 device scheme for the past 6 years but with netbook devices. We have decided to go with Lightspeed which is an external MDM company. We have visited other schools also who have used them and they seem to find it quite easy to manage. I am looking forward to starting this new venture but I know they'll be bumps along the way haha!

[RLR]

Not sure if this has been posted yet but some people seem to be against devices in education: https://images.apple.com/education/docs/ipad-in-education-results.pdf

[AlanD]

...there's no real proof yet that having a device like an iPad actually increases learning potential.

That's often what I hear from subject teachers. It may even be true (Although actually there is a lot evidence that it can promote learning. Whether its "Can promote" or "Does promote" usually depends on the teacher )...but my job is to promote the learning of ICT skills....and you won't learn those unless demands are being made which stretch what students (and staff) do. And that is much more likely to happen if there is easy and natural access to ICT hardware. Seeing and using ICT as part of everything that is done seems much more appropriate than hauling a class off for some contrived and artificial activity in an ICT suite.