Questions and Answers about implementing a 1:1 Laptop Scheme

Questions from a school thinking about implementinga 1:1 Laptop Scheme and my answers:

1. Was your school completely Mac-based prior to the 1:1 program? If not, how easy was the implementation of the Macs and what feedback did you get from staff and students?

1. The school was fully Mac before the 1:1 program. The school is only 3 years old - so it was easy to introduce the Apple Mac's at the very beginning. For the first 2 years we had Mac Book Trolleys, which teachers could book at certain times during the day. This was fairly successful, but of course teachers demanded more and more use of the trolleys, so at that time we decided to go 1 to 1. Because we had the laptop trolleys first, it was much easier to introduce the 1:1 scheme as both student and teachers were already used to using the Macbooks and Apple applications. However, we still have a few teachers who struggle with using the Macs instead of a Windows based machine,especially the teacher who teach grade 1 and 2. But most teachers are very proficient with the Macs, we give quite a lot of training to use the Apple Macs and we give one to every teacher.

2. Also, do you use any specific educational software?

2. Most of the applications are the Apple applications, like iLife and iWorks, iLife seems to be the most popular and is used heavily.We don't have many educational software applications, but instead use educational applications, which run online through the internet. The school policy is that we can only purchase Apple Mac educational software, which is increasing in its availability. I am just about to purchase some software, but most of the educational software will be paying for licenses to use online educational packages.

I am trying to move the school more towards 'Cloud' applications like Google for education and Open source or free educational packages, like Prezi.com, Edmodo.com, Skype education and Glogster. There are a lot of free tools available for the school to use, especially in the Secondary school.

3. In our school we are thinking to offset the costs to parents over a period of 3 years. How did your school handle this?

3. We originally tried to find a supplier/bank who would provide a 3-year loan or low interest credit on the purchase of the laptops, but was unable to find anything that was suitable. We also looked at the possibility to lease the Macbook to the parents, but the cost was so expensive, that we decided against it. In the end the best option was to ask them to pay the entire amount in one go. We did ask parents their opinions and had a mixed response, but once the scheme got underway we had very few complaints or issues. Whatever you do, try to pass the responsibility of payment on to the parents, do not take any responsibility for payment as a school, especially if you have a transient student base like most international schools?

4. A huge point that we are discussing here are the administrative rights. We don't want to give students limited access because they paid for the laptop and its theirs, but on the other hand we want to protect our network. Did you grant your students administrative rights?

4. We do not give administrator rights to the students. When we set up the laptops we have 3 different accounts, School Administration which has complete rights for everything. Then Parental Administrator rights with most Administrator rights. Then the Student account,with no administrator rights. However, what we do is give the password for administrator rights to the parents, the parents can then if they choose, give their child the administrator password. We allow students to download educational material whilst at school and monitor them through the logs on the server. We have a strict AUP and enforce the rules and guidelines of the AUP to all of our students, which is signed by both parents and students. Our students in the secondary school do not get banned from any websites or programs,however, they are not allowed to play online games or download non-educational content during school time. We have the policy of educating the students and giving them digital responsibility, rather than banning and restricting everything. We also have training sessions for Parents to show them how to use the Parental Controls on the Macbooks, so parents can choose to restrict things at home if they wish.

5. In my school many people are windows advocates and insist on a copy of windows on the Macs(if we go Mac), is there a copy of windows running on the macs (either as a virtual machine or via boot camp)?

5. Yes we still run windows using "virtual box" on both the teachers and students Macbooks. Teachers need the Windows operating system to access our student database system called SIMS, we also still have a few old Windows based educational software applications. However, from January 2011, we will be running our Database Management system through a web based applications, so hopefully there will be no need to use Windows.Office works perfectly well on the Mac, so teachers can still use the same applications if they wish. The main problem with using a version of virtual Windows on the Apple Mac is transfer of files from one to the other, to overcome this we use 'DropBox" so files are accessible in both applications.

6. Many sources that I found whilst researching the costs of Macs vs. PCs said that Macs are a lot cheaper in maintenance and have a lower TCO. Do you know if this is the case at your school?

6.Not sure about this questions. In terms of things going wrong, crashing, having viruses, the Apple Mac's very rarely breakdown or have problems. The same is true of the Apple backbone structure, it is very solid, our Apple Servers never have any issues. If you look at the long term costs, then possibly Apple Mac's have a longer life than laptops and far less issues, but am not 100% sure.

We chose Mac's also for the support from Apple Education, we also chose the Macbook Pro 13' for all our 1:1 learners, as the cost benefit was better than the Macbook, for the specifications and speed of the laptop.

We do have a few problems with combining Windows based servers with Apple based servers as our Office still use Windows based machines, except for Marketing.But we employ a really good IT technical manager who is passionate about Macs and Apple, but also has a good knowledge of Windows OS.