In 2009, the Second Baptist School had just one employee in its technology department. Today there are eight full time staff members as well as a thriving 1:1 initiative that earned Second Baptist the honor of being named an Apple Distinguished School for the second time in the past two years.
When the school first entertained the idea of going 1:1, the then three member technology department got together to form a committee. They decided pretty quickly to purchase Apple devices.
“We really wanted ease of use. We wanted something that would be easy to switch to and when we started looking at a Windows platform it was like, well, which laptop would we choose?,” says Hannah Noble, director of Technology, Second Baptist School. “It was almost easier to start with Apple and find a reason not to use them.”
Noble and staff then visited Greater Christian Atlanta, a Christian college preparatory school, at the suggestion of Apple reps. Greater Christian was already an Apple Distinguished School. Although Noble had never heard of the title before, she and her staff knew they wanted to achieve something similar for Second Baptist.
The First Step
In 2010, the school began its journey by distributing iMacs and MacBooks to 172 faculty and staff members.
“We knew it was going to be a big change for our faulty so we actually had our faculty and staff switch over to Apple products the year before we implemented 1:1,” says Noble. That way, teachers had an entire year to become familiar with the Apple platform before any devices were handed out to students and integrated into the classroom.
The school also hired two additional members for the technology department to ensure faculty were properly supported during and after the transition. According to Noble, the new staff members met regularly with teachers and helped them to think differently about how they would structure their lesson plans once each student had a device. The idea was to think more creatively and to move beyond worksheets and typical book reports.
Moving to an Apple platform also allowed Second Baptist to keep device repairs in-house. “We have two Apple-certified technicians that do all the repair work on student computers at the school so we don’t have to send them off. We didn’t find that with any other platform,” says Noble.
The following year, in August 2011, every student in grades 5-12 received a MacBook. The year after all fourth grade students received an iPad, existing MacBooks were upgraded to MacBook Airs and Apple TV’s were installed throughout the school to facilitate content and screen sharing. By spring 2013 every third grader had an iPad and first and second graders were given the iPad mini.
Inside the Classroom
“I think the iPads have just totally changed the way the teachers are planning,” says Noble. “In the lower school we’ve seen a huge decrease in worksheets and they’re doing a lot more creative assessments.”
Students use the Keynote presentation app, iMovie and digital scrapbooking for school assignments. One activity involves the students weekly vocabulary list. They use either keynote or iMovie to create a digital presentation with pictures that represent the vocabulary words.
“They put a little more thought into it and they remember it better too,” says Noble. Parents have even commented that students are working on their homework a lot more because the assignments are fun.
Last summer, Second Baptist also purchased a 3D printer, a tool that is gaining a lot of excitement in the K-12 space as an up and coming technology. The printer is used mainly in math and science classes along with tools like Sketchup and Fusion 360. Students can create models and then actually have them printed out to see what they would really look like. This inspired the creation of an entrepreneurial class that is open to juniors and seniors.
“What they’re doing is trying to create products and sell them, but the neat things is they can print out what they’re trying to sell,” says Noble. This gives the class more of a “real world” feel.
Second Baptist students have an array of technology at their fingertips. In addition to the Apple devices, middle school classrooms also use MimioVote, a student response system that allows teachers to poll students and administer quick quizzes. Second Baptist also uses the Google Apps for Education platform and has done so for the last six years after moving from Microsoft Exchange to Gmail. Teachers use the Google platform to create shared calendars and to collect student work via Drive.
The technology staff created a folder in Google Drive that is automatically shared with teachers. This folder was added as the lower school iPads were prepared for deployment.
Students use the folder to submit assignments, even if the assignment was not completed using Google Docs. That way all school work is stored in one easily accessible location. The added bonus is that the folder is also easy to share.
“Teachers love having that instant access all the time and that they are able to share [the folder] with the next year’s teacher,” says Noble.
The folder then becomes a digital portfolio that follows students throughout their academic career.
Because the content stored in Google Drive is so important, Second Baptist also invested in Spanning, a backup tool for Google apps. Spanning can backup and restore data from Google Drive, Calendar, Contacts and Sites. According to Noble, provisioning users and restoring backup through Spanning takes just minutes and is very easy to use.
Invest In Your Tech Department
Second Baptist has come a long way from its early days as a one man technology department. The school has even presented at the annual Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) conference in Austin, Texas about their journey. Part of the presentation covered the structure of the IT department. The technology staff at Second Baptist shared how important it was that their school administrators supported and invested in the technology department while moving ahead with digital learning.
“A lot of teachers tell us that they are so frustrated because they don’t have the support at their school, but yet the school keeps adding on more and more technology,” says Noble. “We did our session in the hope that administrators would hear it and realize it’s totally worth investing in your technology department.”
Noble advocates having a full time technology staff. Many K-12 schools have employees that teach computer classes for part of the day and then dedicate the rest of their time to tech support. While that may be a cost-effective approach, it’s not the best one. That employee’s time is divided between teaching duties and technology. That means they are planning lessons, grading and doing all of the tasks required of a classroom teacher while simultaneously trying to provide tech support.
“For a year or two, we had two employees that had a duel role. It works because it has to in a way,” says Noble.” “But really, in the end, it’s better to have someone dedicated to just support all day.”
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