Lessons From Another Rollout

Friday marked the end of yet another rollout for Flint Hill School.  For the past 3 years we have been a 1:1 school, and at the beginning and end of each school year we distribute devices to the incoming students.  This June was the rollout for the new students in grades 7-12 for the 2012-13 school year. This year we decided to schedule the students in groups of 10 for 30-minute appointments. During the appointment we cover our AUP, the nuts and bolts of how to use the laptop, and confirm a few key configurations, such as Wifi and email access.

After a successful 5 days and 90 laptops, this is what we learned… yes we learned something even though we have now done this 4 times.

1. Setting up appointments is key to a smooth rollout.  We use Pick-a-Time to handle all the appointments, email reminders, etc.  It is easy to manage, simple to use, and has been a valuable tool for each of our rollouts.

2. New students are excited to get their hands on the new device, and new parents are excited to hear about parental controls.  Even at the high school level parents would like to know if they are able to monitor, control, and track their child’s use of technology. Not a bad idea in my opinion, but generally starting the conversation with “we trust you” instead of “we want to monitor your internet use” is a easier way to go.  At FHS we leave this discussion up to the parents, and simply give them an administrator username and password, which they can use at their discretion.

3. Keeping it short and to the point is great, but 30 minutes really isn’t enough time.  Last year we worked with back-to-back hour appointment slots and felt like we had too much down time. So, this year we stepped it up to a 30-minute appointment, but with everything we had to cover we were always running a few minutes late.  45 minutes is probably the perfect amount of time.  Another option is to make it a 2-hour session and include actual hands-on training for the new students.

4.  The students aren’t going to laugh at my jokes. As much as I think my cheesy puns are funny, maybe it’s time I stop using the same old jokes and learn some new ones.  Also, I need to remember that these kids (ages 12-18) are new to the school, and in some cases new to the country. So finding humor in the tech guy’s apple jokes isn’t something that will happen until September (if I am lucky).

That’s about it for now.  I am off to explore ISTE 2012 in sunny San Diego.