Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock is an independent school catering for children ages from 5 to 17 years. In 2009 they were inspired by the announcement of the Apple’s new iPad that would lead them to become the first school to offer 1:1 iPad provision for learners and staff. Since that time they have been working to integrate the use of this technology into the fabric of learning in their school. We visited them in October 2012 to find out what their experience with their 1:1 approach had been.

We met with Fraser Speirs (computing teacher), who has been responsible for the planning and management of the school’s iPad deployment. We asked him about the challenges there might be with managing apps to over 100 iPads in his school and he explained that there had been issues with this aspect of their iPad initiative but with the advent of Apple’s volume purchase and configurator tools that this had now become a much easier and smoother process.

Cedars School: Managing apps Interview with Fraser Speirs about managing apps

Fraser was accompanied by Andrew Jewell to explain the use of their syncstations to help manage the apps on their iPads. They also discussed practicalities such as charging the iPads and explained that this was the responsibility of the learners at Cedars School of Excellence with an expectation that they came to school with their device charged and ready for the day.

cedars_syncstation Interview with Fraser Speirs and Andrew Jewell about the process of syncing the devices (apologies for slight interference in this recording)