The Right Tools

Moody and IT Director Bobby Ireland say the credit for the success of the SAA-SDS iBook initiative starts at the top — with President Daush. In fact, say the pair, without strong support at the highest levels for their mobile computing program, the outlook would have been fairly bleak.

“I know of other schools,” Moody notes, “where the tech staff has the wonderful idea to implement a 1 to 1 initiative, and makes the purchase. But without the backing of the powers that be, you’ll end up going nowhere quickly. Our president’s vision, and the fact that she listened and trusted us, made for what we feel has been an extremely successful program.”

Thanks to the Apple 1 to 1 Learning initiative, most classes are more student-centered, with digital media projects replacing some unit tests and papers.

— Amy Moody

Ireland adds that having the right hardware also has been key. With the reliability of the wireless iBook notebooks with Mac OS X, and an infrastructure powered by Mac OS X Server and two Xserves, SAA-SDS’s faculty and students have yet to miss a beat.

“I’ve been employed in the IT industry for a long time, and I’ve seen just about every possible problem you can encounter,” says Ireland. “But a couple of months into our initiative, Amy and I looked at each other and said, ‘Have we dodged a bullet here? Is there a booby trap waiting for us someplace?’ We’ve basically had no problems. Our networks have been very stable; our AirPort Base Stations are reliable, and everything just works. It’s been great!”

Professional Development Ensures Faculty’s Success

SAA-SDS’s IT team was careful to ensure that all faculty members felt comfortable with their new technology tools. The school first tapped Apple Professional Development to provide after-school instruction to the teachers. Since the rollout of the iBook notebooks, Moody and the other technology integrationists have been offering half-hour weekly professional development sessions.

“During the first year of our integration,” she recalls, “we covered in-class presentations, student projects, research, assessments, and more. In the high school, we recently began having content-specific meetings by department. We hope this will energize our faculty, because everyone can share content-related experiences.”