Rolling out the iPads

Today was the first day of iPad roll out at May Community Academy.  The teachers and I have been meeting on a regular basis to establish procedures for this week.  Ms. Beckom's 6th grade class, room 203 were the first to receive the iPads.

Today the iPads were brought up by me in bags (7 per bag).  Ms. Beckom had the students make signs that listed their name and iPad number prior to my arrival.  These would be taken with a photo of each student and made the background for each iPad.  This provides more ownership by each student and makes it quick to identify who's iPad belongs to whom.

When I arrived I simply had to call out an iPad number such as B-7 and the students came up to collect their iPad.  The distribution went smoothly.  I demonstrated for the students the basics: home button, using the camera, maps, how to zoom, and volume control as well as how to save a picture as a background. Students quickly adapted to the iPad and found Photo Booth right away.  They seemed to enjoy browsing through the other apps, stopping to practice math facts in the Math Ninja app!

The final part of today's roll out was to take the iPad survey embedded as a post in this blog. This is a survey unique to MCA; they will complete iPad grant surveys later in the week.  The plan is to take screen shots of the survey results and allow students to interpret data based on the responses of their classmates.  Check back in a few weeks for that post.  

Three students (along with 3 alternatives) were chose to be responsible for picking up, distributing, collecting, and reconnecting the iPads daily.  Those students did a great job today!