SUHSD’s plan for student technology in 2015-16
iPad Deployment to students
This year iPads will be issued to 7-9th graders during the first weeks of school. On May 11, 2015 the school board voted 3-1 to put the 1-1 device initiative on hold in order to give a task force time to evaluate the district’s overall technology vision and mission. As a result, 10th graders will not be given iPads for the 2015-16 school year.
Liability for Loss/Theft/Damage
Parents and students are responsible for school textbooks and equipment checked out to them per Board Policy 6161.2.
The list of charges for iPads and accessories are as follows:
iPad Replacement fee – $484.00
iPad Case fee – $18.00
30 pin cable – $11.00
Lightning cable – $14.00
Power brick – $22.00
Pedestals (on some iPad cases) – $3.00
Asset Tag – $4.00
The cost to replace a cracked screen (the most frequent form of damage to an iPad) is $49. The District provides heavy duty iPad cases meant to reduce the risk of damage to iPads. You can help prevent damage to your child’s iPad by making sure your child keeps the District provided case on his/her iPad at ALL times.
In the event of theft or loss, report the incident to your child’s school immediately. SUHSD owns the iPads so police reports must be generated by SUHSD personnel. The sooner you report a lost or stolen iPad, the better the chances are that we will recover it which will save you money and headache. You should regularly ask your child to see his/her iPad. Students sometimes lose iPads and don’t report it to anyone for fear of getting in trouble at home and at school. In a recent student survey, we asked students how often their parents asked to see their iPads. A large percentage of students said rarely or never. We want to have students report somewhere between daily and weekly.
iPad Documents (Agreement, Use and Care, Opt Out, Loss and Theft, Contract)
Internet Content Filtering and iPads
When students are at school, they must access the Internet via a school wireless access point. Those access points are programmed to apply policies that filter inappropriate content so students can use the Internet at school with the reasonable assurance of not being able to access content that is not appropriate for school age children. We have created an iPad profile that applies the same policies to student iPads when they are using wireless access points at home. If you are concerned that your child has access to inappropriate content during or after school, please contact your child’s school immediately and we will take measures to review and (if necessary) restrict access to those sites.
SUHSD specifically blocks student access to YouTube and Facebook.
Digital Citizenship
SUHSD has created a comprehensive digital citizenship course for students. The course is appropriate for middle school age students. We have made the course publicly available through our learning management system – Canvas LMS. The link to that course is: https://sweetwaterschools.instructure.com/courses/863571
Parents are encouraged to review the course, discuss the topics with their children, and educate themselves about what students need to know in order to be digitally literate and safe.
Applications and Services provided to all students
Students receive the following paid iPad applications (these are not free to schools or to consumers)
Notability – used for annotating on pdf and image files. It can also be used to create subject based folders and for note taking
Explain Everything – used for screencasting on iPads
In addition to iPad applications, students in SUHSD have access to the following as noted:
Canvas LMS – used for end of course exams, accessing course content or supplemental materials, district wide training i.e. digital citizenship or TUPE (alcohol/tobacco prevention)
Jupiter Grades – used for school/home communications about grades and schoolwork
Google Drive – used for cloud storage (each student gets 30GB of space – the equivalent of 2 iPads), productivity (Google docs, forms, draw, presentation, and forms).
Achieve 3000 – for all middle school students to improve their critical thinking and writing skills when reading expository text such as newspaper articles, academic literature, or subject specific information.
Learning Upgrade – for middle schoolers (at most middle schools) needing assistance with foundational math and English skills.
Shmoop – for all high school students to assist with nearly every kind of test prep from CAHSEE to AP Exams.
Safari Montage – for all students to provide access to high quality, curated educational videos and resources aimed at assisting students who want to explore topics more deeply or use quality video for presentations. Safari Montage is a complete, information age digital library.
Apex – for high school students in need of credit recovery, Apex offers several online courses that are facilitated by SUHSD teachers.
More about COPPA and protecting student information
Google provides schools/districts with free Google Drive accounts that are registered under the District’s domain i.e. Sweetwaterschools.org
Google:
Schools assumes the responsibility for complying with COPPA and the information that students submit. When offering online services to children under 13, schools must be cognizant of Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Per the Google Apps Education Edition Agreement, any school administering Google Apps Education Edition acknowledges and agrees that it is solely responsible for compliance with COPPA, including, but not limited to, obtaining parental consent concerning collection of students’ personal information used in connection with the provisioning and use of the Services by the Customer and End Users. (click on image below to see larger view)
