Reference

"Digital school of the future" - Parent-financed tablet classes State secondary school Schöllnach

Tablet instead of blackboard - digital media concepts for schools

Schöllnach secondary school is making great strides towards digitalization

The Staatliche Realschule Schöllnach is located in the Lower Bavarian district of Deggendorf. Over 60 teachers look after more than 700 pupils according to the motto "Preparing for life with heart and mind". The profile includes technical, social, artistic, economic and linguistic focuses. The school has already received several awards for its initiatives in the field of school digitalization and in 2020 was one of two secondary schools in Bavaria to take part in the "Digital School" pilot project launched in 2016. Following this, it was able to successfully contribute its expertise in the digital field to the school trial "Prüfungskultur innovativ".

Initial situation and objectives

For over ten years, Schöllnach secondary school has been working intensively on the question of how digitalization can be profitably integrated into lessons in order to support learners and teachers alike. The large educational institution has not only had a very good network infrastructure for some time now, but the use of digital tools and hardware to enrich lessons is now well established. The coronavirus pandemic was once again a huge catalyst for further digital processes, but these often failed due to lack of funding. When the "Digital School of the Future" pilot project was launched by the Bavarian Ministry of Education for the 2022/23 school year in mid-2022, the school did not hesitate for long and applied as one of 250 schools. The aim was to provide pupils in the seventh and eighth grades with their own tablets on a 1:1 basis, financed by parents. The state of Bavaria funded each device with 300 euros.

Challenges

Within just three months of the order process starting, the iPads were put into operation for the start of school in September. It quickly became apparent that the very well-equipped school infrastructure with comprehensive Wi-Fi and a gigabit internet connection was challenged by an additional 300 devices accessing the network at the same time. Adjustments had to be made and optimized in places. Such readjustments are not unusual for such a large-scale project. Experience shows that new lessons are always learned as soon as the devices have been in practical use for a while. This was also the case in Schöllnach. The school wanted to restrict the use of the iPads as little as possible, for example by presetting school mode conditions. However, it later became apparent that some functions, such as the AirDrop function for exchanging data between the devices, could be misused. This should be prevented. ACS was able to deactivate this feature very quickly and centrally on all devices using the iPad manager.

Solution and realization

The first-time implementation of tablet classes in complete year groups for 250 pupils and around 60 additional teacher devices was a new challenge. In addition, Schöllnach acted as an anchor school for the pilot project in Lower Bavaria due to its existing digital expertise. The question of a smooth introduction was therefore fundamental. It quickly became clear that it should be iPads, not least because of Apple's many years of expertise in the education sector, its powerful technologies and update services, and the good price-performance ratio (including the high resale value of the devices).

The ACS Group, with whom the school had already been working since 2019, was chosen as the partner for implementing the tablet classes. ACS was able to contribute its extensive experience, for example in the introduction of parent-financed iPad classes, as around 300 similar projects have already been implemented in Bavaria alone. In addition, the certified Munich-based Apple education partner is now supporting 115 of the 250 Bavarian pilot projects. In addition to providing advice, the ACS Group was also responsible for the complete organization and equipment procurement for the Schöllnach secondary school. This included order processing via a store set up especially for the school and parents with a free choice of devices, payment processing with parents, delivery of the fully pre-configured devices and free webinar training courses for teachers and parents. In order to save costs, the school project team initially considered managing the iPads via the school's internal system administration. However, it quickly became apparent that the effort involved with over 300 devices would exceed the available capacities. The decision was therefore also made to use the comprehensive iPadmanager management solution from ACS.

Result and outlook

The secondary school staff, pupils and parents are more than satisfied with the new tablet classes in the two selected year groups. The project team is therefore already planning the introduction of iPads in the new fifth classes for the coming school year - this time not through parental funding, but with existing loan devices - and the continuation of the "Digital School of the Future" pilot project with the Free State of Bavaria. For Schöllnach secondary school, it has become very clear that digital platforms and devices, as well as the wide range of materials and applications available for them, can support teachers and offer new, exciting opportunities for preparing and designing contemporary lessons.

Are you also interested in introducing parent-financed tablet classes?

Then please contact us at tabletklasse@acsgroup.de or arrange a non-binding consultation