1:1 Scheme Information Request

[Jowley]

Hi All,

 

My Digital strategy lead has asked me to gather some information on his behalf as we are about to go down the 1 to 1 device route. What he's looking for is something along the lines of:

 

* Wireless info - what system do you use? how many clients?

* Did you need to do any specific backend upgrades to support the transition?

* What devices are people using for their students? Any recommendations?

* Did anyone who's gone down this road use any external companies that have helped/are supporting the transition?

* Do you have any recommendations or warnings for implementing a 1 to 1 scheme?

 

Any information received is much appreciated. PM if more comfortable.

(Equally - mods if this better suited in another forum please move it).

 

Thanks

[Cazab]

A secondary school I briefly assisted had a 1:1 iPad scheme, and they had to employ one person specifically to deal with insurance and repairs for them all.

[howartp]

We've been 1:1 since 2017

 

* Wireless info - We're on UniFi NanoHD's plus AC-Pro's in the halls/sixth form lounge

* Did you need to do any specific backend upgrades to support the transition?: Picked key cabs to add POE to, ran data from each AP location to those cabs (bypassing the 'nearest' cab), two GB links trunked back to core from each POE.

* What devices are people using for their students? We're iPad throughout for staff and 1:1. BYOD (maybe 5-10% of population) are own preference.

* Did anyone who's gone down this road use any external companies that have helped/are supporting the transition? The Learning Foundation will take/manage your Direct Debit donations and claim Gift Aid for you.

* Do you have any recommendations or warnings for implementing a 1 to 1 scheme? We send away 2-3 devices for repair every day of the week (1800 pupils Y7-Y13). We use Eden's BreakFix policy, which is not-an-insurance policy; you get two free fixes per device (or six per three-year-scheme) before they say no. If they say no, you just have to pay for that repair. No hassle.

[TronXP]

* Unifi UAP-AC-HD, (we have had various upgrades over the last 8 years)

* We ensured that we had good enough internet, we upgraded our entire backend to 10Gb fibre to every cabinet, and we upgraded all of our switches. Now this was partly down to our routine replacement. We also upgraded our Firewall/Filtering system to cope with the extra clients. You may also need to think about printing and charging devices, we added a couple of printers in open areas easy for students to access and installed Mobility print. We looked also at Central charging lockers but in the end, didn't go with that due to lack of space.

* We have been using Chromebooks for the last 7 years, An extended warranty is a must and if you can afford it accidental damage cover. Also if you can afford it, 8GB RAM makes such a difference in usability.

* We didn't have external help, but I still have a team of 4 in my department and we had a Digital leader from the teaching Staff side to help with training.

* As above we have at least 3-8 devices a day that have been broken, we also allow pupils to take them home, so we get another 5-10 students a day who forget or don't charge their devices and need a spare. We have a spare pool of 50 devices, today I have none left. Repairs can take weeks (looking at you acer) so be prepared for that. Our most recent batches of Chromebooks have been built to order, so minimum of 30 and 8 weeks lead time. So make sure to order well in advance if you are getting anything that's not straight off the shelf.

 

Feel free to PM if you want any further info.

[PotNoodleTech]

1:1 chromebooks here.

 

* Wireless - aruba system procured by LA. Whatever system you put in don't skimp as the purchase price is somewhat inconsequential compared to the massive negative effect on learning once your 1:1 is in full swing.

 

* Backend - if your having 50-100 wifi points with up to 35 devices connected to each then you will need decent switches, 10gig building uplinks and at least a 1gig internet connection

 

* Devices - chomebooks for students and staff - we use google in every classroom and chromebooks are just so darn good open the lid, the kid is in and learning. Job done. I wouldnt go back to windows or ipads now. (we do have some ipads for certain use cases)

 

* No external companies - with google and chromebooks it's very easy to set up and manage so we do it alone. Every £500 you spend on a company or a consultant is 3 more chromebooks you could have bought.

 

* You have to deal with accidental/malitious damage one way or another, for some this is warranties (not generally worth the paper they're written on on mobile devices) for others it's insurance (excess more than the device??) for others it's a third party agreement with a company (very expensive). For us we deal with it all in house, keep at least 5% of your fleet size as spares, and repair as much as humanly possible in house. I am not saying this is the right way. But it is our way.

 

* Anther thing to note is - sustainability. What do you do in 5 years when all the devices need replacement? We are doing sustainability payments so that in 5 years time we have the money for replacements - that way a single particularly nasty year's budget won't risk destroying our 1:1 provision

[Andycat]

1:1 iPads since 2014(!)

 

* Had 2 WiFi in that time, was 3Com, now Fortinet. 125 access points (AC) nearing end of life but been great.

 

* Dell Core with Cisco everywhere else. 10gb backbone and 1gb Internet.

 

* 1500 students and 140 staff with iPads. Teachers have Laptops too.

 

* Originally E learning foundation for payments etc, but only for first 2 years. All purchasing, admin and repairs handle by the school now. We build in a pot from the contributions and have repairs done locally.

 

We run it where at the end of year 9, they get a new device and parents contribute monthly for 5 years that includes the device, managing it and repairs.

[Jowley]

Really appreciate the responses and your time writing them.

 

Seems a real advocation for Ipad and Chromebook - are these down to just ease of use/setup?

 

We are a 365 school so makes it just a little bit harder for us to think about adopting something that naturally works better with apple/google. Or am I wrong in thinking this way?

[HTCPCP]

not sure what the state is now, as I left 6 years ago, but we did this starting nearly 10 years ago with ipads.

1 - Ruckus originally, but changed to Meraki

2 - Nothing major, but it discovered some flaws with coverage of the wifi in certain areas. Had to create a new VLAN for the devices, and get a different IP scope for the devices, as we couldn't expand our scope enough for all the devices. Also we changed how our filtering worked which was already planned but sped up a bit (all devices connected to that range were automatically applied student filtering)

3 - At the time both chromebooks and ipads were compared, with ipads winning out. Have a look to see what they want to do with them, as finding the right solution for your school may be different to others.

4 - Yes and no, we spoke to companies, and looked at what was being offered. We used a few different solutions companies for a bits and bobs, but mostly in house

5 - Plan for everything. Devices will be broken, lost, stolen, sold by kids, forgotten etc. Repairs can take time, which can cause issues for classes etc. This can take quite a bit of time up for staff if insurance is used (we were actually dropped by our insurers part way in due to the number of breakages.

-> Make sure they are able to be fully wiped with activation lock removed too. No matter what you do, kids will find a way to get their own accounts on there, and then lose access to them

-> Get a test group (potentially a few classes that have specific teachers) to test it and help find the faults before they become a problem. From making sure apps are installed ready to go, wireless profiles work properly etc

-> Cases and policies - get the policies worked out, and make sure good cases are provided with the devices. From app store policies (whitelist app store only etc, internet policies, charging policies, malicious damage charging policy), to what happens when someone forgets the device, breaks it, loses it, brings it in uncharged etc. There are also certain safeguarding issues we had to deal with regarding this, including location services, and what it can be used for.

-> Learn the MDM before the rollout - this will save you a lot of time later

-> work with teachers on how to use it

-> what is going to happen when someone inevitably uses a knock off charger? We had someone who found a charger randomly, used it at home and then had it go bang causing thankfully only visual damage to someones house

-> how are you going to manage updates for the devices. A few hundred ipads all trying to download an OS update is going to hit your connection hard

-> what happens when something happens (internet outage, wifi problems etc) during a lesson (anything like this will cause pushback from especially the less tech savvy teachers about using them).

[Net-Ctrl]

In regards to your Wi-Fi network design - assuming you don't have the devices to run a live simulation - if you're looking to assess what you currently have and whether it is going to deliver what you need it could be worth getting a Wi-Fi survey completed including density planning. They would need to know the device type/qty in a particular location and can run predictive density tests in your live environment. This would gauge how well set up you are - it might also highlight other considerations.

 

If a company has previously done an on-site survey they might be able to do this for you without visiting site again.

[2ilent8cho]

We are a 365 school so makes it just a little bit harder for us to think about adopting something that naturally works better with apple/google. Or am I wrong in thinking this way?

 

Office 365 works great on iPad. It has Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneDrive, Teams, OneNote. The Apple ID's can also be Azure/Entra linked too.

 

* Wireless info - Ruckus , around 2100 iPads (and 450 Mac's) with AirPlay traffic from the teachers Mac Screens running over this too, holds very well.

* Did you need to do any specific backend upgrades to support the transition? Just made sure the Wireless, Switches and Leased Line had sufficient bandwidth.

* What devices are people using for their students? iPads , all day battery, instant on/open, easy management with a decent MDM.

* Did anyone who's gone down this road use any external companies that have helped/are supporting the transition? No, all done in house.

* Do you have any recommendations or warnings for implementing a 1 to 1 scheme? Just be clear why you are doing it, if Teachers don't use them it's pointless. It has made a huge difference in our school, most stuff is now done electronically, every teacher and subject use the OneNote Class NoteBooks, they love the fact they can mark work on their iPad (using the Apple Pencil) and saves them carrying boxes and boxes of heavy books for marking. Teams is heavily utilised and all core knowledge for subjects is kept on it.

 

We were originally 1:1 2009 to 2014 with Windows based Netbooks, then moved to iPads in 2014. The iPad is much better suited to this task and iOS is less hassle than Windows.

[Andycat]

We manage our iPads using Microsoft anyway, in InTune/ Endpoint manager whatever it's calling itself today. Cheapest way of doing an MDM for us.

[rogerdnixon]

The site I'm based at (I look after a MAT), has been 1:1 for about 8 years now.

WiFi - Extreme - not the cheapest but very good.

Site is all gigabit - but some aggregations on HP switches.

Load balance 2 1Gbps leased lines via PFsense+ with Securly cloud based filtering

Chromebooks or ChromeOS Flex for all - staff and students. Latest staff device is the Asus CX34 - touch flip with stylus. Latest student device is the touch flip Asus CR1100.

Did it all ourselves.

Started by doing it with one year group and then rolled out to all year groups. Fully engage with staff, students and governors.

 

We now have 10000's of ChromeOS devices across the Trust which typically take zero time to manage on a typical day/month while I cannot say the same for ipads and Windows devices which still linger around in some places.

[TechMonkey]

Just gone live this September. We have gone fulll BYOD, hands off, pupils devices.

 

* Wireless info - what system do you use? how many clients?

-- We use Ruckus. Got around 550-650 clients. Peak for the last week was 915. We were doing year group help sessions with 80-90+ pupils in a single room and the system didn't blink. Well no one screamed that they had no wi-fi.

 

* Did you need to do any specific backend upgrades to support the transition?

-- Yes but our backbone and infrastructure was not suitable in any way, shape or form. We ran new Fibres, replaced all swtiches, removed daisy chains and put some proper stacks in. Ruckus again to try and standardise.

 

* What devices are people using for their students? Any recommendations?

-- We made the choice to set a spec and let parents get the device they could afford or had. we did set up a portal with Dell 3340/5340/7340s, a bag, stylus and accidental damage warranty/insurance. It did make the devices look expensive but I think it was quite a good deal. Ultimately wasn't where I wanted them to be, price point wise, but quite a few parents got them.

 

* Did anyone who's gone down this road use any external companies that have helped/are supporting the transition?

-- We went with a supplier and a third party that supplied the portal. All I'm going to say is the process wasn't smooth for various reasons. I do think the three way split between the manufacturer/supplier/portal did add to the complication. I'm not sure if we will run the portal again. Still weighing up the benefit over pain. The companies were all very helpful though. Do ask lots of questions and make sure they are transparent about the process. One company we worked with suddenly let slip that the payments would run through the school and ultimately we could be on the hook for non-payment. This was specifically something our Finance head did not want and we had been up front about this so it was very disappointing to come out at the final stage. We had lots of assurances that other school sdo it like this and that it never falls to the school, but it wasn't what the finance team wanted to deal with and I wasn't goign to try and overrule them.

 

* Do you have any recommendations or warnings for implementing a 1 to 1 scheme?

I am torn still. If we had gone full 1:1, school owned devices, we would have had full control over them and be allowed to do what we want with them. But we would have had to be a lot more hands on, a lot more logistics and I think we would have had a lot more stick from parents.

Make sure you get everyone on board as soon as you can, mostly to foresee non-technical things you wouldn't think about. Lockers for example, they will need somewhere secure to store devices and we didn't have the capacity, which nobody thought to ask about.

Make sure you get staff carried along, get someone in management to develop or oversee a training program. It shouldn't be your issue, you will have enough to do. Staff will probably be the biggest issue.

Make sure you get parents informed. Hold some information evenings.

Make sure your team is up to speed and rock solid, processes and planning. This will take an enourmous amount of time and resources.

Remind everyone, pupils do not fall out of the womb knowing IT. They will need support as well.

Parents will bring up all kind of issues you never thought of. We had parents talkign to us about pre-pubescent skeleo-muscular development and how laptops will make them into hunchback dwarfs.

You will get a lot of flack. Parents who think you should go BYOD as they have a device will pipe up if you supply them. Parents who think the school should supply the device will scream if you go BYOD. Parents will pipe up if you don't go Apple, and if you do. Etc, etc.

As you have already identified, make sure your infrastructure is rock solid. Get a survey done if you are unsure. At least you will be able to wave a piece of paper to show everything is ok, or have something to show you need funds.

Don't say yes until you are sure and happy it is going to work. Nothing worse than a scheme that fails and you have to get everyone to trust the system again after major issues.

 

Happy to answer specific questions here, DM or real world chat.

 

Good luck!