Ned’s Keeper

Like many typical medium size communities, McKinney ISD holds a good school district rating in the state of Texas with a Recognized status. The town of McKinney was named by Money Magazine this year as one of the top 5 places to live in America, and it really does have a wonderful small town atmosphere. The school district, like many others across Texas, is downsizing to meet budget demands, but doing so in a very thoughtful way so that the effects in the classroom are minimal. The one thing that is not downsizing though is McKinney’s push to improve education for every unique individual that comes through the school house doors.

With several technology pilot programs going on in the district this year, MISD isn’t known for waiting around to see what works for other people. MISD is known as an innovator. Because of the success of the technology pilot programs this year and because of the confidence our administrators have with the leadership throughout the educational community, MISD felt it a great time to move forward with an elementary Title 1 one-to-one (1:1) program. Eight of the 21 Elementary schools in McKinney ISD are Title 1 schools and will be participating in this 1:1 initiative called simply the Apple Initiative or A.I. The term 1:1 refers to the concept that each child will have a device at their disposal. In this case, the devices will either be ipod touches, ipads or Macbooks.

When venturing into such a huge program in unchartered territory, it is customary to do months, if not years, of planning. This however came on quickly. With Title 1 funds available at the right time and with the overwhelming need to update computer infrastructure on so many campuses, the timing couldn’t be better. MISD is ready. Knowing that this program is about to set sail, the Instructional Technology Team and the Curriculum and Instruction Team have started to prepare together.

The question is, what is there to prepare for in getting started with a large scale 1:1? To be honest, the leadership group, deemed the iTeam, is learning as we go. There  isn’t really any data for elementary ipad programs and limited examples for 1:1 ipod touch programs in elementary. Not only do we lack examples to follow, but those seven campuses will be transitioning from HP teacher desktops to teacher Macbooks and will also be introduced to 1:1 learning almost simultaneously. At this point, no one in the district even uses Macs, except for niche classes. This is going to be a fun challenge! Amazingly there isn’t a soul on the iTeam that is not up for the challenge and we certainly aren’t backing down because of our lack of knowledge. So off we go.

A lot of things happened this week and I hope to get to them in the third blog, but for now I want to cover where we have been in the last two months in blog number 2. I am sharing this information in hopes that others will find it useful in preparing for similar projects. From my research, there is limited blogging about getting started from inside district walls. I have been given the green light to share away and so I plan to do just that. I plan to walk you through, week by week, all of the ins and outs of rolling out the AI project. Of course, please don’t think this is limited to just Apples. That is the platform we are using, but I can guess that many other platforms will be used in very similar ways. Join me for this incredible journey as we push to improve student engagement and learning. It should be a fun one!