IT Trends | Feature

7 IT Best Practices for 1-to-1 Districts

CTOs and directors of technology share the lessons they've learned in rolling out devices to every student and teacher.

According to Lenny Schad, chief information technology officer for Houston Independent School District (TX), 1-to-1 initiatives should focus on education, not technology. Plunking devices in front of students won't do anything to improve learning outcomes unless educators participate in the decision-making and planning process and have sufficient professional development and support to help them make effective use of the devices in the classroom. "This cannot be driven by IT," Schad said. "When school systems are thinking about going down this path, they really need to think of it as a district initiative that is driven from an instructional perspective. Technology is a key player in that, but it isn't the primary driver."

In April, THE Journal featured an article called "9 Lessons From 1-to-1 Pioneers" that provides guidance on implementing a successful 1-to-1 initiative from a curriculum and instruction perspective. However, 1-to-1 most definitely requires IT involvement, whether in implementing adequate network infrastructure and security or providing maintenance and support. This article outlines IT best practices for 1-to-1 as identified by CTOs and directors of technology from five school districts.

1) Size your network for maximum use.

A successful 1-to-1 implementation requires network infrastructure that includes sufficient bandwidth to the Internet, between the schools and within the school, as well as enough WiFi density to support all of the devices. In an environment where every student could potentially be online simultaneously, that's a lot of bandwidth and density, and it has to be in place before you roll out the devices. Scott Smith, chief technology officer of Mooresville Graded School District (NC), said, "Kids don't care whether they're clicking a full-motion video or they're opening this tiny little email. When they click on it, they expect it to work, so we need to have the infrastructure in the background that makes sure it works."

Numerous organizations — including the United States Department of Education, SETDA and EducationSuperHighway — provide recommendations on how much bandwidth and density you need. Even if you can't initially provide as much as recommended, you need to make sure you can ramp it up quickly if necessary. "Let's say your ISP drops 100 meg at your door," said Smith. "What kind of connection did they drop you? Did they drop you copper or fiber? And if you went to them tomorrow and said, 'Hey, I need to turn this circuit up,' can they do it or do they have to run new wiring that's going to take three months?"

If you can't provide the recommended levels of bandwidth and density, you can use strategies to make the most of what you can afford. Before implementing 1-to-1 at HISD, Schad had a network assessment done. "When we got the results back from the assessment, the recommendation was to scale back, not do all of the high schools at one time," he said. Based on the district's existing network capabilities and the work they could do to upgrade before the rollout, they decided to limit the initial implementation to 11 high schools and plan to expand to additional schools as network upgrades permitted.

2) Use mobile device management.

When you have thousands of mobile devices to maintain, you need an easy way to install new apps, deploy software updates and manage configuration settings on a large scale. Many 1-to-1 districts meet this need by using a mobile device management (MDM) system such as Casper, AirWatch or Filewave. Others use similar tools built into an operating system or student learning platform.