How One School Prepared to Deploy 800 iPads in Just Two Hours

Immaculata-La Salle High School is in its third year of a 1:1 iPad initiative. Last year’s deployment of the newest devices went off without a hitch. In just two hours, over 800 iPads were fully configured and ready to be rolled out to students and staff. Unfortunately, this hasn’t always been the case.

The first year the Miami, Florida-based high school introduced iPads into its classrooms, it took about two months for the devices to be completely ready for distribution. The whole process was such a nightmare, that Fredy Padovan, the high school’s executive director for Advancement and Technology was practically cringing at the idea of having to go through the process again when it was time for an upgrade.

“I was dreading, dreading, dreading switching to the next generation,” says Padovan. He spent the summer of 2011 working on those original iPad 3’s the school had deployed. It was just Padovan and one technology coordinator so Padovan “bribed 16 students with Chipotle and Sushi,” to work two or three, eight hour days getting the devices ready. It was a grueling process.

“We manually had to touch every single device to get it to install the initial MDM profile,” says Padovan. “That took five to seven minutes interacting with every device.” Next, they had to assign the devices based on user input so some devices were tagged specifically for grades 9, 10 and 11, etc. He then had to manage the inventories of those devices and make sure each had the programs they were supposed to. Needless to say, this entire process took quite some time.

A New and Better Way

Last year, Padovan heard rumors that Apple was about to introduce something that would revolutionize the way iPads were deployed. The school still had one year on its lease with Apple on the iPad 3’s, but Padovan was willing to break that lease and upgrade sooner if this new product was the miracle solution he’d heard. This new solution was Apple’s Device Enrollment Program (DEP), which allows school-owned devices to be automatically enrolled in mobile device management (MDM) without anyone having to ever touch the iPads—a marked improvement from Padovan’s last deployment.

“I told my Apple rep the moment that this goes public, if you can show me that it works and the MDM vendors are behind it, then I will break my lease and send everything back to you,” recalls Padovan. ”

That is exactly what Padovan did. He returned the iPad 3’s and upgraded to the iPad Air. The enrollment process for these devices was much easier using DEP. “We opened the boxes and the iPads were already enrolled and I didn’t have to do anything. There’s no other way to describe it than magical,” says Padovan.

MDM

The other half to this “magic solution” was the high school’s mobile device management program. Padovan had switched MDM vendors since the original iPad deployment and is now using AirWatch, which handles both the profile and application management piece of the iPad deployment. One of Padovan’s favorite features is the internal app store catalogue he can set up on each device via AirWatch. Now, he no longer needs to send students a redemption code to download the apps they need for class. He can simply assign the apps student need to appear in their app store and those can be downloaded on-demand. Padovan has the option to push out apps, but has quickly learned that is not the best method for application management.

“I try to avoid pushing them out because teachers were complaining. Since I work all hours, students would get an app notification at 10:30 am in the middle of taking a test. Now it’s on-demand. Students just go in and push the button themselves to download the app.”

A Flexible Policy

Although Immaculata-La Salle chooses to have a flexible device use policy, meaning they do not typically block apps or websites, it is an option with AirWatch.

“What we realized was most schools are locking things down and then complaining that students are focusing more on trying to undo everything the school did instead of learning,” says Padovan.

The high school took the opposite approach with an honor system, leaving everything open. Anything that was abused was then taken away. So far, there are only five apps that have been blacklisted. The school felt that taking an open approach would better prepare students for the working world when you are handed a corporate-owned device and expected to use it appropriately.

“We wanted to start getting them used to the concept that everything you do is public and permanent and everything that you do on a corporate device is monitored,” says Padovan.

If students choose to sync iMessage on their tablets with their account on a personal device, the school fully maintains the right to go through those messages.

“That’s brought a lot of teachable moments overall and it’s brought some discussions into the classroom so there’s a benefit so to speak,” says Padovan.

If a student does try to download a blacklisted app, Padovan and the student are sent a notification that says the student’s actions have triggered a compliance check. The student then has one hour to delete the app or they receive a Saturday detention. If an incident happens over the summer, the device prompts the student to sync to the AirWatch app over and over again. According to Padovan, most students eventually get annoyed and give up.

The high school’s previous MDM solution was not as responsive and in the case of a student downloading a blacklisted app, Padovan had to run a report and then download it as an Excel or PDF file, and then go through pages and pages to find the names of the prohibited apps.

“As you can imagine, I was very motivated to check compliance,” jokes Padovan. Since switching MDM providers, checking compliance is no longer a chore. It’s so easy, in fact, students are under the impression that Padovan never sleeps because no matter what time of day they try to download a blacklisted app, the device reacts via AirWatch.

“I love it,” says Padovan.

Entirely 1:1

The unique thing about the 1:1 program at Immaculata- La Salle is that the iPad integration doesn’t stop with students.

“All of our staff, even our head of cleaning, has an ipad, ” says Padovan. “It’s not just the student learning. It’s looking at our systems and integrating the iPad into our systems.”

Part of this approach is to move to the paperless classroom. Teachers are now using the app Showbie to assign, collect and review student work.

“Last year we saved something like 10,000 sheets of paper during finals week,” says Padovan.

In addition to the cost savings seen by paper reduction, teachers now have a new method of communicating with students. Apps like Explain Everything and Educreations allow teachers to make screen recordings or videos of lessons that they can then send to a student who needs help. The idea is, as they continue to create these recordings, teachers will have a “help library” full of resources they can quickly send to a student in need.

When students graduate, assuming they’ve paid their technology fees, they hand in their old iPad and are given a brand new 2GB, Wi-Fi device to take to college.

“If they go through their four years and then we just say OK give us this device back and go to college, what’s the use of that?,” says Padovan.

Instead, the school wants students to see the iPad as a device that can help them be a productive student and prepare them for success in college and beyond.

Download: Enabling Collaborative Classrooms

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