Dive Brief:

• As 1:1 programs become more commonplace, Robert Craven, senior director of technology at Tustin Unified School District in California says districts will have to be aware of a host of potential pitfalls.
• Craven has overseen the rollout of five separate 1:1 programs, including a three-year-old program in Tustin — and each district, he says, will struggle with its own particular set of challenges.
• One caution he makes is that third-party involvement can be a minefield for even the best-prepared districts; Tustin, for example, had a nationally-recognized curriculum tool fail when its high schoolers tried to use it, because the company’s servers weren’t up to the task.

Dive Insight:

One of Craven’s key tips for districts is to make sure all of the network infrastructure is in place before buying devices. He says it can take a year and a half or more to fully upgrade a network to handle a slew of new devices, and if that piece isn’t right from the start, slow connections and glitches can prevent teachers and students from making best use of the tech.

“The devices are a lot easier to manage than the network piece,” Craven told eSchool News. “If you put them out there and they don’t work well, people aren’t going to touch those devices again.”

Also of note was a lesson on Apple iOS authentication for districts using iPads: Parents have to sign off on student accounts. “That posed a real problem in a district where there are multiple languages spoken at home and not everyone has Internet connectivity. It turned into an enormous, annual undertaking,” Craven said.