The Institute of Culinary Education Serves Better Content Delivery with T2 Computing, iPads

Richard Simpson says the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) needed a better way to serve content to students.

That solution was batches of brand new iPads implemented by T2 Computing.

Simpson says the iPads replaced students’ big, clunky textbooks and better engages them with the content.

“The idea of using iPads was born from the desire to deliver content in a more meaningful way,” says Simpson, Director and Vice President for Education at ICE. “That’s what made them attractive. We also began to think about better ways to deliver content to students that would make them more prone to interacting with it. We realized we could make what used to be a heavy batch of books into an easy-to-carry iPad.”

Simpson also says iPads were ICE’s device of choice because they were used successful at other institutions. Plus, he says iPads supported the school’s IT limitations.

“iPads seemed better suited to our application than any other tablet did,” Simpson says. “They were already used in [other] educational institutions. We also knew we had to choose a single device because of our own IT limitations; we were not in a position to be device agnostic.”

Simpson says the iPads integrated smoothly with instructors’ workflow, and created more interactive teaching opportunities during class time.

“We added a whole AV component to our school to enable our instructors to lecture and show their own content through the iPads that are linked to video screens in the kitchens,” he says. “It’s a lot better way to deliver content.”

Jerry Gepner, CEO and president of T2 Computing says the iPad implementation and ICE had an efficient system to get students’ devices configured, even when the implementation started three years ago.

He says students can now configure their own devices.

“Today, all of the setup is done by the student, but done by using videos we’ve produced,” Gepner says. “They actually log in and we don’t do any reconfiguration of the device. They’re given instructions where to find the videos, and the videos walk them through the configuration of their mobile device. It also installs mobile device management (MDM) software, so it installs an MDM client that we administer as the “super administrator.” The school is the day-to-day administrator of it, which is how they can push content, apps and other things to the students’ iPads, and they can keep it as current as they want.”

Gepner says one of the challenges ICE faced was weaving the iPads into instructors’ teaching styles.

However, he says this hurdle was jumped by constant communication with instructors’ about their needs.