1:1 iPads and Digital Learning in Belton ISD

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On Tuesday, June 19th, 2012, I attended iPadpalooza at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. This conference about all things iPad in education was co-sponsored by Eanes ISD and TCEA.


The first session I attended at iPadpalooza was presented by Instructional Technology Coordinators Terice Schneider and Vicki Ventura of Belton Independent School District. They gave an overview of how Belton began experimenting with BYOD and small 1:1 implementations over the past two years, culminating in opening a brand new middle school (grades 6-8) with 1:1 iPads for students in the 2011-2012 school year. Belton ISD is very generous to share information about their innovative projects. You can get a good synopsis of what has been happening in their district on their 1:1 initiatives web page.  Terice has also been posting some very insightful, practical implementation information on her blog. These are both valuable resources anyone considering 1:1 programs of any type should bookmark and refer to regularly!

Full Disclosure: I have a great deal of faith in the information Terice and Vicki share because I was privileged to work with them for several years when I was a  classroom teacher and campus technology facilitator.

In addition to the wonderful resources I've linked to above, here are my notes from their iPadpalooza session.

Lessons Learned from and Tips for 1:1 Implementations

Staff Development is KEY!!! It's much harder to fix the mistakes you make in staff development than to do it right the first time.

Belton is paying for most of their implementation through the Texas Instructional Materials Allotment (IMA). Some district funding also has to be kicked in. They are no longer buying things like dictionaries and calculators because apps can do these things. They still have calculators for state testing until the Texas Education Agency recognizes the home button can now be disabled in latest version of iOS, essentially locking students out of other apps on their devices.

When Belton tried BYOD, use in classroom was at teacher discretion. Devices were not being used. When 1:1 iPads were being implemented at a brand new middle school, only FOUR teachers volunteered to go to the new school where this was happening. The rest were assigned to the new campus. (Read between lines: There was a strong reluctance to implementation at the new campus).

Teachers also had to transition from Windows PCs to Macbooks with only  1/2 day of training in addition to several days of learning about the iPads and integration approaches. Teachers were VERY STRESSED. There were tears. Coordinators learned from this not to try to do too much too soon when it comes to staff development. Take baby steps!

Leadership is key - Principal and superintendent must be on board. You can tell somebody what to do, but you can't make them believe something. You have two choices - move them to a new position or convert them. They had one teacher with 40 years experience and she volunteered to move to the new school and embraced the 1:1 model. Other teachers with similar years of experience retired after training because it was too much for them.

After the school year began, district tech staff had to back off a bit at their middle school and allow teachers to build a culture (they were at a brand new campus building a new culture on top of everything else). Encouraged simple implementations like posting handouts to their websites that the students could download. Or making flashcards for review. Allowed teachers to explore and reach back out for more training when they were ready for more.

By the end of the implementation year, approximately 80% of the middle school teachers were able to move into truly using the iPads in instruction. Give teachers permission to start with supplementing, then replacing, then truly changing instruction. Teachers do not want to look stupid. Give them permission to learn with and from their students.

Next year, the high school is going 1:1. Gave high school teachers iPads ahead of time. Did four one hour sessions to get them comfortable with the iPads. Teachers can do Facebook, Pinterest, etc. - whatever will encourage them to get comfortable with the device. In summer staff development, brought in teachers from middle school to teach the high school teachers. Having experienced teachers teach other teachers provides more credibility and opportunity for sharing practical tips. Training of the high school teachers has been a marvelous experience and drastically different than the middle school teacher training of just a year ago.

The district had a budget of $40 per iPad for apps at the middle school.

Vicki and Terice have an iPadU (staff development) agenda and other documents which they will gladly share.  Belton will let us use/steal everything they have. We can email them for editable copies of their stuff. Many of their resources and their contact information can be found on this web page (also look for more pages in the left-hand navigation of the website.)


Digital Learning in Belton ISD


In spite of the challenges of the first year of large-scale implementation, the 1:1 initiatives have been fruitful in Belton ISD. The video below gives a great overview of the impacts felt by students and teachers alike.

1:1 iPads In A Third Grade Classroom

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On Tuesday, June 19th, 2012, I attended iPadpalooza at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. This conference about all things iPad in education was co-sponsored by Eanes ISD and TCEA.


Laura Wright, a third grade teacher at Eanes Elementary School, gave a wonderful presentation with many practical tips for implementing the use of 1:1 iPads in an elementary setting. Ms. Wright used the iPads in her classroom during the 2011-2012 school year. Each student had access to an iPad, but the devices did not go home with the students.

On her website, Ms. Wright provided a synopsis of all of her tips in a downloadable document. She also posted a video which gives you a peek into daily life in her classroom. You should check these out; this teacher knows her stuff and I learned a great deal of practical, useful information from her.

Practical Tips for Using iPads in the Classroom (My Notes from the Presentation)

During the presentation, Ms. Wright asked us to download an app called Nearpod, which is a relatively new app. Free. Using this app, students see on their iPad a presentation which is being sent out from the teacher's iPad. Students cannot advance the presentation because the teacher is in control of the presentation. Nearpod can deliver tests and videos  and also be used to take polls. There were some glitches with Nearpod during the session, but Ms. Wright says overall it has worked well and is still a new app that is continuously improving.

Ms. Wright stressed that you need classroom routines in place before using iPads.

In the classroom, students use textbook stands for their iPads. They use the small size of these stands.This keeps the iPads out of way of other student materials. But keeps iPads on desks all day so as not to lose teachable moments.

In presenter's classroom, students get all their materials out in the morning and randomly go to iPad cart to get their iPad out. (Don't create a line of kids at the cart!)

Keep iPad in textbook stand on inside corner of desk. Less chance of iPad getting knocked on the floor.

Plug ear buds into iPad all day long even if they aren't used: keeps iPads muted when using apps. Use a hanging wall chart w/pockets to keep ear buds organized.

Ms. Wright does not recommend using iPad on flat surface because students can't type and have eyes on teacher at the same time.

"Grab and close" to get students to get out of an app. iPad cover needs to be closed so you know the students are listening.

If you have snacks in your classroom, if you can get junk on your iPad from your snacks or has any liquid, it can't be on the desk with the iPads.

Selected students called "Tech Teachers" help peers in classroom. Teacher does not need to know everything about every app.

Took an hour a day to explore apps with students during the first week of school. Ask individual tech savvy students to investigate an app for you before you decide to use it with all of the students.

Use collaboration and let students help each other. There will be movement in your classroom.  An atmosphere of learning and collaboration will evolve. Exciting if you allow collaboration to happen.

Personalize! Give them control to change their screen savers. Ms. Wright noticed students would change their screen savers throughout the year based on what unit of study was going on. Students will take more ownership and better care of the iPads if it is personalized.

Ban the word "play" as in we are going to "play" with the iPads today. Distinguish between home use of personal devices and school use of this iPad.

Use art programs for math warm-ups every day. Let students share their favorite art program. If they are more comfortable with an app, they will use it better and learn better.

Post QR codes around the room for search engines and large units of study. Create a safe path to Internet sites! (This works well with a small group of iPads too if you are using them in a center.)

Presenter says since she's had iPads she has not set foot in a computer lab.

Settings & Apps Ms. Wright Recommends:


In iPad Settings go to General - Accessibility - Multiple settings to help kids with special needs (or anyone). Turn on AssistiveTouch - can create new gestures for someone with motor issues. But Assistive touch in general puts a home button on your iPad screen. You can rotate, lock screen, etc.


Ms. Wright has a single email address/iTunes account assigned to all of her iPads. Uses that to download apps and it goes simultaneously to all iPads in the classroom


A Fact Every Day - App that engages Kids.

Glow Draw - favorite drawing app for math warmups. Black screen and glowing colors for doing the warm-ups.

Math Bingo - Consistently rated as a top math app. Uses every day for skill building and saw improvement in test scores. Has kids use this during warm-up time each day and record their scores so they can improve their score each day.

Arcademics - students can play racing learning games and compete against each other. Most are 99 cents but sometimes they come up for free.

Scribble Press - Another drawing app. Includes built in books you can create from.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in my previous posts on teacher experiences and student experiences in 1:1 iPad classrooms.

Teacher Experiences in a 1:1 iPad Environment

On Tuesday, June 19th, 2012, I attended iPadpalooza at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. This conference about all things iPad in education was co-sponsored by Eanes ISD and TCEA.

Early in the day I attended a panel where I heard the perspectives of four students who had been participants  in a 1:1 iPad pilot which took place at Westlake High School during the 2011-2012 school year. You can view my notes from that panel here.

After hearing about the pilot from the student perspective, I was eager to hear from teachers who had been involved in the project. So, for the last session of the day, I attended a teacher panel. The panel included three English teachers and one science teacher, who told a little about their experiences and took questions from the audience. Below are my notes on the thoughts/experiences which they shared.

A little background: Because of the timing of the approval of the pilot and the time needed to purchase the iPads, the 40 teachers involved received their iPads approximately three weeks before the 2011-2012 school year started. For the majority, this was their first experience using an iPad.

The Teachers' Experience

Two paths to take - embrace it and run with it even thought it is scary or forget it and let others take all of the risks.

Be willing to look foolish and collaborate. Students will have to help you. A mental shift has to occur. Teachers are no longer the keepers and disseminators of knowledge but become facilitators of learning. iPads kick this shift into high gear. (Emphasis in this paragraph mine because that comment stood out so much!)

Academic integrity issues come up. It's possible students can take screen shots of your online quizzes and share with students later in the day. So, put different questions on quizzes for each class.

One trick is reorienting the desks so teacher can see the screens during certain types of activities. It's also important sometimes to say "put your iPads away" when they are not necessary.

Part of the role as educators is fostering face-to-face communication. Closing the iPad and looking people in the eye to converse is important sometimes. Don't feel pressure to have the iPads out all the time.

If the iPads are going to be out, what are we going to be doing with them that makes them useful to learning right now? It takes time to understand this and shift curriculum in the classroom.

Initial misconception was they had to do everything all the time every day with the iPad. It's ok to take baby steps. Take on one thing at a time. First, focus on getting content to the students via the iPad. Then, tackle collecting work via the iPad, etc.

Students are really forgiving as teachers are learning the iPads and like to help.

It's ok to tell the kids to "power down" when they need to focus on you in the classroom. Get their faces out of the screens.

In science one teacher had about 75% of her kids doing things completely paperless and turning in assignments through New Annotate or Google Docs. Sent assignments back to them with grades and comments.

iPads were really beneficial for "backpack filers" (the students who traditionally keep everything "filed" [stuffed] in their backpacks). Now teacher can tell them it's probably on their iPad and if they can't find it they can download it again from the website.

Establish expectations early on. For example, they WILL use their school issued email and they WILL set it up correctly. Put a correct name in there so the recipient knows who is sending the email. English teacher says she will focus on this requirement at the start of next school year instead of giving students the choice to use school or personal email throughout the year. It won't be ok to say, "Oh, I don't check my school email."

Nuts and bolts of using the iPads are not always intuitive for the students. Example: setting up correct servers for apps and WebDav (the app used to access shared network folders). One teacher says she will spend the beginning of the school year getting a lot of those things set up. Through trial and error this first year, they learned a lot about better ways to roll out the iPads.

Teachers also have definite thoughts on when the iPads are taken up. District technology decided to take them up a week before school was out, but finals weren't over. There was some "civil disobedience" as a few students opted to keep their iPads past the turn-in date so they could study properly.

Not all students are proficient with or prefer the iPads; some still prefer paper. One teacher tells students it is their responsibility to print the documents out at home if they prefer paper. She thinks as students get iPads earlier in their high school careers (Eanes is expanding the program to include all freshmen and sophomores next year) comfort levels will increase.

Even with all of the awesome apps, email is one of the best tools they have. They work a lot with kids on proper format, using school email not personal, etc. Some students changed their personal email accounts after being allowed to use them and realizing that their addresses weren't ones that they would give to an employer or professor. (Example one teacher gave was "sexygirl34" as an email address she was not super comfortable sending to.)

Science teacher says she often lectured from apps instead of her PowerPoints. For example, when looking at anatomy of foot, she can use an app to turn a 3D model on her screen and talk about it. Better understanding for students!

Science teacher really loved Google Docs for making quizzes for her students. Used Flubaroo script to set up automatic grading. There is a YouTube video for learning to use this.

Teachers are saving tons of time in the copy room. Electronic docs also good for making corrections if a mistake is found in a handout.

English teachers use Notability app to organize student documents.

40 teachers in pilot this year, so there were no specific campus requirements for how much teachers needed to do with the iPads. As they move forward with all students receiving iPads, more requirements may come along. It was a good way to start since they were figuring things out on the fly.

Kids are still kids, even with iPads. Sometimes you have to say "time out" and take the iPad away if they are off task. It's part of them growing and learning.

More on the 1:1 iPad Teaching and Learning Experience

The panel was amazing. I truly enjoyed the honesty of the questions and the answers and getting a peek into the transformation that the teachers experienced during their 2011-2012 school year.

If you would like a similar peek in addition to my notes above, I encourage you to watch the video below. It was put together in January of 2012, just half-way through the school year, for a presentation to the Eanes ISD School Board.


WIFI Update from Westlake Chaps on Vimeo.