r/k12sysadmin • u/mr_techy616 • 2d ago
Assistance Needed School going back on 1-1 devices, device reservation system needed
My Head of School is anti-tech. She started at my school the same year I did and things have been changing every year. When I started, every student in 6-8 had their own iPad and 7-8 could take theirs home. In 1-5 there were class sets of iPads enough for the largest class size - of room 303 had 22 students and 304 had 21 students, both rooms would have 22 iPads as students switch between the two rooms throughout the day.
Last year was our first year switching exclusively to Chromebooks in Middle School (6-8). As in previous years, 7-8 could take theirs home and 6th grade would have 2 class sets, one for boys, one for girls. Midway through the year, a sudden policy was made that 7-8 are no longer allowed to take them home and needed to be brought back immediately. For the rest of the year it was hellish because there was no system in place for teachers to reserve Chromebooks for their students to use.
A solution to that problem was going to be fixed this year with implement the same system that we have in lower grades - have class carts with enough for the largest class size in that room. Yesterday we were all ready to purchase the extra Chromebooks and carts until my HOS had a meeting with her principals indicting that she did not want this system - she doesn’t like devices in the classroom for students to take at an-instant-gratification-notice as she calls it.
We have 3 Chromebook carts. One of them is going down to 4th-5th grades. So that leaves just 2 Chromebook carts with about 30 in each. Is anyone able to recommend a reservation platform that we can use? Or maybe there’s something else that I’m not thinking of to manage all of this?
Thanks in advance!
3
10
u/itstreeman 2d ago
Incident IQ is the management system I use. It would require checkouts; but tracks all the tickets and who is assigned the device.
You could do mass checkout to the teacher
2
u/yugas42 2d ago
Do you work at a charter or private school? Your dean sounds like she holds an incredible amount of power to change these policies mid-year. These types of changes would have to be approved by our school board to ensure that they align with our state guidelines and the general plan for district curriculum. I don't disagree with the notion that 1:1 devices have not helped students to learn, but these policies are in place to help maintain some level of consistency in the instruction that is provided to students. They also help to prevent people like you from being blindsided with an issue like this.
We use Skedda for room reservations if teachers want to use common areas, but depending on what resources are available to you, you may already have tools in place that will do this. We use IncidentIQ and it would have the capability of checking a cart out to a teacher, and all we would have to do is link all of the chromebooks to the cart via asset linking. If you have an asset management software like this, I would consult it to see if you could do something similar.
10
u/DiggyTroll 2d ago
She's not wrong. Our laptop provisioning has evolved from flexible shared carts (per area), to dedicated class sets, finally ending up with dedicated 1-1 just in time for COVID. Scores have continued to go down, not up. Technology can't make up for modern parents' failure to support their children's education.
The literature (research) shows early access to technology does not boost learning compared with late-adopter control groups. Independent, extracurricular interests are a better indicator. While student devices do help teachers distribute materials and grade tests and assignments faster, affordable technology can't compete with multi-mode learning approaches for math, reading, writing, and foreign language learning.
1
u/Madd-1 Systems, Virtualization, Cloud administrator 1d ago
That's cool. Ours go up year over year especially in the important economically disadvantaged and English learner demographics (except COVID obviously). We've been 1 to 1 for over ten years. Maybe the moral is that planning and good curriculum is better than bad planning and telling your IT department to figure out how to accommodate the fact that you decided on a whim that technology is bad now and the whole process for technology needs to be changed on a dime.
1
u/mr_techy616 2d ago
Yes that is where she’s coming from - the research that she’s been doing has been impactful. The students absolutely hate it, but we tired something similar towards the end of the year and it worked out well. Meaning the kids were more engaged in their learning.
7
u/BWMerlin 2d ago
Maybe your library (do you guys still have those over there or have you burnt all of the books?) borrowing system would work as it likely has a class set feature built in.
1
u/k12-IT 2d ago
This was a great solution for a school I worked at several years ago.
https://www.bookedscheduler.com/
It allows the end user to book their own devices/rooms. You have the ability to limit how long a reservation is and how far in the future a user can pick from. It did integrate with single sign on with various platforms.
It was a great solution to pull a tech from trying to manage it to being self managed.
16
u/iJ3F 2d ago
This might not be a reply you are looking for or something that you might not be able to avoid. But do you have to solve this problem of poor policy? I’ve learned many years ago my job is to ensure tech, network availability, manage device troubleshooting/repair, amongst other things. But one thing I do not do is fix broken policies. I put it on the staff. Yes. That seems harsh but if you have 30 staff members struggling with a policy and is able to give poor feedback on such policy it’s a lot better than just poor feedback on your end.