About
Wayland High School has been discussing a one-to-one initiative for the last year or two. We hope to implement it in the ’12-’13 school year; at this point, the plan is to use MacBooks, but we still need funding, approvals, etc. It is a hope but not yet a certainty.
Realizing the potential of iPads and knowing that other schools are using them for their one-to-one initiative, the technology department and I agreed that I would pilot iPads with one of my English classes to assess their viability as a one-to-one device. The real question that we are examining, of course, is to what extent do they compare in functionality, durability, and ease-of-use to a MacBook / laptop.
I teach two sections of College English 4, each about 20 students. One section will have the iPads while the other will not. Thus a control is built into the pilot: part of our assessment is to do different activities both with and without the iPads.
We’re about a month into the pilot and it’s going well. The students are enjoying having them (part of which is lording it over their classmates that don’t…) and are using them in other classes (provided their teacher oks it).
Enjoy our experiment and please comment, ask questions, offer advice, etc.
Wayland High School's One-to-One iPad Pilot 
Feb 16, 2012 @ 21:11:27
How do you prevent students from playing games? We deployed iPads to al students grades 9-12. A few teachers are having difficulties keeping students from this.
Feb 16, 2012 @ 22:41:59
If you don’t mind, I’m going to respond to this with a post. I think it’s an important question, that I was going to get to at some point, so I might as well address it now: https://whsipadpilot.wordpress.com/.
Ed