Monthly Archives: September 2012

Flip This

I need to stop myself from engaging in the same conversation over and over.

Take this Tweet from my online colleague, Amber, who is an elementary school assistant principal:


Amber is one of many virtual colleagues with whom I connect frequently and banter about all things related to education, technology, and even family. Her Tweet offers some strong support for the idea of the “flipped classroom”; an idea which has gained a lot of momentum among progressive, well-intentioned educators in the last couple years. It ensures success for ALL students, she states.

I have three main cognitive hurdles that prevent me from fully jumping on board with this idea:

  • First, we lack the common language to meaningfully engage in a dialogue about flipped classrooms. Many times I try to tweet back at someone to probe their thinking further. Unfortunately, no matter how softly I try to couch my questions, they are often met with fierce defense of the Flipped Classroom.
  • Next, amidst much debate about the effectiveness of any kind of homework, proponents of classroom flipping generally frame it as an opportunity for students to view the “lecture” portion of class as homework. The rationale, as I have understood it, it so that there is more class time for “fun stuff” like labs and hands-on activities. Doing so carries a load of assumptions, including (minimally) the fact that students (1) have access, (2) will bother to watch it, and (3) have the skills to process and make meaning of what they’re watching (note-taking, summarizing, and the ability to ask good questions about what they don’t understand for starters). In my experience, these skills often need to be explicitly taught and scaffolded for students.
  • Finally, I have not seen any evidence that suggests that a flipped classroom is better than a traditional classroom with all other things being equal (same content, same instruction, same teacher…). I often read words like “better” and “improved” (again, laden with assumptions about what’s going on in other teachers’ classrooms) without any qualifiers. Better than what? Based on what? Improved compared to what?

Taking a great lecture and “flipping” it removes the interaction and shared experience of being in a classroom or lecture hall with a strong teacher who can read the room — a teacher who knows how to coax the best out of students through purposeful, intentional verbal and non-verbal cues. Flipping a lousy lecture just tortures kids at home instead of in the classroom. There are just too many variables missing from the conversation around flipped classrooms.

If we want to create relevant, problem-based, constructivist learning opportunities for our students, simply rearranging the “old way” of doing things won’t be enough.

iPad 1:1 Models: Personal or Managed?

One of the first decisions we had to make when we decided to embark on our 1:1 iPad project was whether to use what I’ll call the “personal” or “managed” models for iPad distribution. I’ll briefly lay out what I know of each model (keep in mind, I’m a principal not a systems engineer), what we decided, and why.

Managed Model
In this model, the school or district own all the software licenses for apps on the iPads. Neither students nor teachers are able to log in with an Apple ID so they only have access to the apps that are school- or district-provided. Theoretically, a student could connect an iPad to their own computer and do a “restore” in order to set it up as their personal device, but they would then lose all the apps provided by the school.

Personal Model
In this model, certain aspects are managed by the district or school (setting up wifi access, restricting app downloads to those rated for 17 and under, etc.) but every user has his or her own Apple ID. This allows students and teachers to reasonably personalize their devices with their own music and any apps they have already purchased on the same Apple ID. In this model, apps are purchased by the school or district but become student-owned; apps are viewed by the school as consumables that are re-purchased each year. Under the personal model, when a student matriculates out of the school, he or she would return their iPad while retaining access to their all of their apps and anything else backed up in their iCloud.

What we decided
These are, of course, superficial descriptions but they give you a general idea of the two models. There are always plenty of “what ifs” and ways to create models that are a hybrid of these two.

In the end, we chose the personal model for several reasons. First, we wanted students and staff to be able to reasonably personalize their devices with existing purchases. I also felt it would give each user more ownership of their device if they felt they could customize it within reason. We still have several profiles loaded1 that our fabulous IT folks have installed and which help us mass-manage important device settings.

If you choose to adopt this model, it is critical to front-load as much as possible with your students and families so that they have already chosen an Apple ID to use on their device. In some cases, families chose to use an existing Apple ID and in some they chose to create a new one for their student. If it were my student, I would make sure that he or she had a unique Apple ID. In my opinion, by middle school kids will want to purchase their own music and apps and I don’t want my iTunes cluttered with “One Direction” singles.

The decision of whether to go personal or managed is a critical one to your deployment and I have provided the briefest of summaries here. You will want to ensure that all parties who have a stake in the management process are involved in the decision.

  1. For my non-IT purposes, I understand that a “Profile” is more or less a way of managing certain settings on the iPad like wifi passwords and the like that need to be common across all the devices. [↩]

Going 1:1 with iPads

In late-May I received an interesting call from our deputy superintendent who told me about a local community group that was curious about putting iPads into a middle school. Specificaly, they wanted to start a three-year, phased-in implementation where, at the end of three years, students at all three grade levels would have iPads. Their goal was really just to see what we could do; what would happen.

I had spent my first two years as principal creatively getting as much technology into the school as possible: MacBook carts, iPads, iPod Touches, Apple TVs… Whenever I had the financial resources and a teacher demonstrated an aptitude and interest, I’d do what I could to make it happen. I didn’t set up an “application process” or create any hoops to jump through. I wanted to empower teachers to try something new and different. And it was starting to work.

I can only assume that all of this had not gone unnoticed because when my deputy superintendent called me she asked something like, “Are you sitting down?” She then proceeded to tell me about this iPad opportunity and how she felt I was the principal to take this on.

I met with the board of the foundation the next week and they explained in more detail their vision. I guess I did a fair job of telling them what I thought we could do at my school because the very next day my deputy superintendent called back and told me to sit down again. The foundation, she said, wanted to do a whole-school, 1:1 implementation right out of the gate and they were going to find the funds to make it happen.

Now, during all this time, none of this was set in stone. It was a handshake here, an email there, and I didn’t believe it was real until the last week in July. In a perfect world, I’d have had the last week of school to share the news and all summer for teachers to play with iPads and get comfortable. I’d had none of that. My leadership team were the only ones who knew about the possibility, but all of us were pretty tight-lipped about it until I went before the Board of Education on August 1, 2012, to take questions along with our Director of Curriculum & Instruction.

The BoE was supposed to vote two weeks later, but voted unanimously on the spot to support the project. They asked a lot of questions and, honestly, I was so nervous I don’t remember many of them. I remember them asking the usual and expected questions about how this would help student achiement, what would happen if one got lost, stolen, or broken, and how the cost would be covered.

As of Wednesday night, we are officially the second 1:1 iPad public school in Colorado, I figured I’d better start writing some of this down for my own reflection and so others might benefit. So far it’s been an incredible ride!