Student Survey CPS

Hi Students. As you know May Community Academy is fortunate to have iPads due to a grant we were awarded through Chicago Public Schools. Last week you took a survey for us, this week you need to take a survey for CPS. Please follow the link below to get to the survey.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHdxcnZfdFBXeTVta3JyNGtpeFZXcFE6MA

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!

iPad Survey for Students

Initial Thoughts

So....what are your initial thoughts on the iPads?  Do you think you will like them?

Managing the iPads

We received our iPads and syncing carts near the middle of August.  While the preference would have been to take them right from the box to the classroom, that was not a possibility if we wanted to do this successfully.  Each iPad (yes, all 96 of them) needed to be registered, named, updated, and synced in order to make them "user ready".  Below lies the process. As you can well imagine, it took more than a minute to get through all of them!

Step 1: After connecting the iPad to the Macbook iTunes launched automatically.  A 'welcome' screen appears.  Click "Continue" to register.

Step 2:  Next you'll be asked to read the "Terms of Agreement" novel.  Accept the terms by placing a check in the box and click "Continue".

Step 3: The next screen will ask you to identify yourself based on your Apple I.D.  I set up a school account at our first training session.  Click "continue".

Step 4:  Now it's time to register your new iPad.  Because this is a school account that I won't be accessing on a regular basis I unchecked the request to receive emails from Apple.

Step 5:  There is a "must have" app that comes up next:  "Find My iPad".  This app is tied into your iTunes account.  If you happen to misplace an iPad or it is stolen you can use this application to lock or erase your iPad remotely.  It also uses the GPS signal to locate the iPad on a map.  I have personally known two people that have used this app on their iPhones to locate them (both, ironically were left in cabs and later retrieved).  On the flip side, I know someone that thought they had the feature but did not, losing their stolen phone.  While not required, it's certainly highly recommended.

Step 6:  Now it's time to set up your iPad.  Here you have two options the first time you connect:  set up as new, and restore from a previous account.  I chose to set each iPad up individually as a new iPad.  When I tried to set them up from the restore feature it changed the name of my iPad to that account name and had to be changed back.  Click "continue".  

Step 7:  This step allows you to name your iPad.  We have 3 sync carts.  Each iPad is named based on its location:  A-1, B-1, C-1, etc.  As a personal choice, I unchecked "automatically sync songs".  I kept "automatically sync apps" checked.

Step 8: You'll be prompted to create a password in order to access a backup file that is created each time you sync.  This will come in handy if you ever need to restore from a back up.  I chose to keep the same password that I have for my school Apple ID account to make it easier to manage.

Step 9: Now that your password for backup has been entered any apps you have installed on the MacBook are synced to the iPad.

Step 10: One part of this process that surprised me was that iTunes University videos did not sync automatically.   I picked up the icon for the iTunes U app (or in our specific case Little Kids Rock) and dragged the icon on top of the iPad icon within iTunes.  It then appears as "iTunes U" under the device subheadings.

Step 11: Once all the apps and videos were synced to the iPad I clicked on the name of the iPad under the "Devices".  This allows you to see a summary of all the information associated with your device, including whether the software is up to date.

Step 12: If you look at the picture for step 11 you'll see that there is an updated version of iPad software available.  Click on "update", then "continue" to launch the software update.

And that's it!!  In our case....only 95 more iPads to go. 

iPad Training at Audabon

Notes that were taken at iPad training in August. The notes were written for the iPad Team at MCA, so when the word "downloaded" is next to an app that applies to our iPads at school. Advanced iPad Training Notes

Welcome to our blog!

May Community Academy is excited to launch a new blog on the use of iPads in our school.

Through a Chicago Public Schools initiative, MCA wrote a grant with a problem based learning approach for our 5th & 6th grade middle school students.  The grant was a competitive one; there were 200 applications.  Of that 35 new schools were selected and 13 existing schools received the grant.  Macy Community Academy received 96 iPad 2's, $900 in app purchases, 3 sync carts and 3 MacBooks.

Our winning proposal is below:
May iPad Grant