Grade+Roll-out+Strategy

=Grade Roll-out Strategy= Bill Arrington, Ron Ussery **__ Tablet Grade Roll-Out Strategy Recommendation __**

We recommend rolling out out new, privately-owned tablet PCs to Grade Nine in Year One of the rollout plan (2010-2011). We will continue each year thereafter to rollout to new Grade Nine students so that full implementation is achieved in the U.S. in four years.

__Middle School:__ We elected to delay rollout in the M.S. until the program is re-evaluated after some experience with student tablets. We do recommend that the school purchase a tablet "cart" for the MS, to be managed by the MS Technology Teacher. During the four periods each day when she teaches Technology Classes, MS students would be trained in the use of the Tablet and its particular software and capabilities. During the remaining three periods, other MS classes can schedule use of the Tablets through the MS Technology Teacher. These Tablets will be school property and will remain secured in the school when school is not in session. A Technology Fee may be necessary to help pay for the acquisition and maintenance of these computers.

__Intermediate School:__ We recommend a similar approach in the I.S., with a tablet cart being managed either by the I.S. Technology Teacher, or the I.S. Science Lab Teacher. Purchase and deployment of this cart could be delayed, however, beyond the 2010-11 school year, or it could be re-deployed to another school.

__Lower School:__ No plans at this time for PC rollout; however, we recommend periodic revisiting to this idea in the future.

__Upper School:__ In addition to the four-year formal rollout described above, we recommend allowing an opt-in by individual students whose cohorts would otherwise never be included (grades 10 and up in 2010-11). Those student families would have the choices of not using tablets/laptops at all; using their own non-supported laptops; or opting in to the school-supported Tablet Program. For Technology Support Planning, however, we need to consider either limits on how many upper class students can opt-in, or establish Spring deadlines for opt-in decisions.

Those students in cohorts covered in the official roll-out plan will be required to purchase and keep up with the officially designated Tablet PC model that will come pre-loaded with specific software.Those students whose families cannot afford the cost of the Tablet will be directed to a particular office in the school for financial aid assistance consideration.

Obviously, teacher training and student usage policies are critical to a successful program, as is the work of every other committee on this project.

//For Original Recommendation (October 5, 2009), see "History" tab, October 19th entries. That grades 6&9 plan was superceded by this revised recommendation based on feedback. Some of that feedback is posted in the discussion section, but more feedback came from the full Roll-Out Committee on October 20.//