Pillars of the iPad School

In 2012, my school, Citrus Springs Middle School, in the small county of (aptly named) Citrus, Florida, applied for a grant in order to purchase a grade-level set of iPads. After we received word we’d gotten the grant, after our happy dance, administration decided to “roll out” the iPads to students in 7th grade during that pilot year. It was a deliberate decision, as 7th graders are “in medias res” of their middle school experience. I like equating our experiences that year and the subsequent ones thereafter to building a plane when it’s already in the air. That initial pilot year had our entire school buzzing about technology. It was a unique time period, as the iPad had just been introduced two years prior, and we hadn’t heard of any schools implementing a 1:1 initiative on the level we were imagining for our students and teachers. This Multi-Touch book will present the experiences we had that year, some of the best practices I’ve used in my classroom and gleaned from our trials and tribulations, and provide a framework or starting point for your school’s 1:1 program.