1:1 Program Update

Copy of Email Sent 9/2/16:

Hello teachers -

Kate and I wanted to give you an update regarding a few things about the iPads.

First the good news:

1. A week after 8th grade iPads were distributed and a day after 7th grade iPads were distributed, every student had their iPad, which means nearly all required paperwork has been turned in.  We’re still awaiting a few insurance payments (and the iPad is NOT insured until payment is received), but this has been a great improvement over last year!
2. Students are using the 10:30-12:30 help time extensively, so many problems are getting resolved
3. Students are being very detailed in their emails to iPadSupport allowing us to identify and solve problems quickly.

Three things have happened recently that have impacted apps on the iPad and network bandwidth.

1. Apple has admitted that their App Store servers that are used to download apps across the U.S. were overwhelmed at the start of school.  So for a couple days early this week, students were having trouble with various connection and download issues if apps were updating/downloading – and most were, since app lists were being updated and iPads were picking up assigned apps.
2. Our local servers that help speed up app downloads stopped working properly, so all network traffic was going out over the Internet to download/update apps.  This slowed down our entire network at the MS, mostly on Thurs, 9/1, and was fixed at the end of the day, as soon as the error was discovered.
3. We’ve been having licensing issues with the iLife and iWork apps (Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie, GarageBand) because of the way Apple uniquely allocates these app licenses.  In some cases, students were asked to enter or create an AppleID if they launched one of these apps.  (They should CANCEL.)  In other cases the app would crash on opening.  This is now primarily affecting 7th grade students.  We’ve tried pushing updated versions to all students, but are still awaiting some license credits so that all students have working apps.  This should be resolved in about a week, so 7th grade teachers may want to delay use of these apps in the near future. Another option is for students to go back to the Catalog and click “Installed" or “Processing" for the app (Numbers, for instance), to force the app to re-download.

Finally, some helpful info and tips:

1. We have sets of keyboards for 7th grade core teachers that still need to be labeled.  We hope to distribute these next week.
2. If you want to use an app with your class, have everyone check at least two days in advance that they have the app.  If not, they should check the Catalog and try to install. There is sometimes a delay of 30 minutes or more for the install to start, so it is best to give kids overnight to install at home.  If the app is not available in the Catalog, please have the student submit a detailed email to ipadsupport@mvschools.org.

IMPORTANT:

Apple is coming out with iOS 10 in the near future.  Please tell all your students that they should NOT install this update until they get instructions from their PT teacher.  Students ARE allowed to update to the latest version of iOS 9 (9.3.5), and some have already been prompted.

We appreciate the effort everyone has (and will continue to) put in to make this a successful learning experience for everyone.  Thanks for your cooperation and patience.