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E d Te c h S h o w D a i l y 9 T h u r s d a y, F e b r u a r y 5 , 2 0 1 5 WAXAHACHIE ISD BENEFITS FROM TOOLS4EVER'S UMRA PRODUCT Waxahachie Independent School District is a rapidly growing 4-A school district located in Texas. The district encompass- es 13 different schools and ranks among the top of its peers in academics, athletics and fine arts. Currently, the district has more than 8,000 students and 1,100 staff members, which in turn made its manual account and password management extremely overwhelming. "The manual process of keeping up with creating user accounts and deleting employees who resigned, terminated or retired was a headache for us," said Robert Keith, Director of Technology at Waxahachie ISD. The IT department had to dedicate one full time employee for three months in the begin- ning of each school year to ensure that all new and existing user accounts were accurate, and that old Active Directory and storage accounts were being proper- ly deleted. In addition, its tedious manual account management process was pre- venting the district from implementing new and beneficial technology. "We were contemplating giving students Google Apps and Gmail accounts, but the big concern was how we were going to man- age these new accounts, so we held off on the project." Drastic Reduction in Time Spent on Account Management Keith found Tools4ever at the TCEA con- ference in Texas and discovered its User Management Resource Administrator (UMRA) product, which would allow the district to easily manage the creation of its Active Directory user accounts. UMRA was implemented at Waxahachie ISD to work with its Skyward Student Information System (SIS) and HR Finance System in order to auto- mate the account management process. When a change is made to a student or employee account in Skyward, it will automatically be reflect- ed in all corresponding systems, and accounts are automatically provisioned. Keith added, "When an employee is hired, UMRA automatically creates a user account which is a huge time saver. Employees have immediate access to systems and applications they need, whereas before it took up to a week or two before all information was complet- ed and accounts were set up." Efficient Password Management In addition to account management, the students, staff and IT department at Waxahachie were burdened by password reset issues. Users were unable to be pro- ductive since they had to contact the helpdesk each time they needed to reset their passwords and were not able to do so when working after school hours. Seeing that Tools4ever also had several password solutions, the district implemented the Self Service Reset Password Manager (SSRPM). SSRPM allows students and staff to securely reset their own passwords without contacting the helpdesk, after answering several security questions, allowing them to be immediately productive. Future Plans Looking towards the future, Waxahachie ISD plans to work with Tools4ever to possibly integrate UMRA with several other of its programs, such as Schoology, to further meet the needs of the district and expand upon the great relationship. "I have never worked with a company so dedicated to its customers as Tools4ever. They exemplify how all businesses should employ customer service rela- tions." For more information, stop by booth #2427. BOXLIGHT DESKBOARD PROVIDES MOBILE, CUSTOMIZED INTERACTIVITY The award winning BOXLIGHT DeskBoard mobile cart is a portable, height and tilt adjustable surface for both whiteboard and DeskBoard use, made interactive with attached ultra-short throw P8 or P10 projector. This product is ideal for classroom use because it is easily adjusted via remote control and can accommodate children interacting both at the screen and in a desktop environment. The portable stand makes it easy to wheel from room to room. The DeskBoard won 'Best of Show' at ISTE in 2014. "We are excited about the DeskBoard mobile cart, and have received enthusiasm from educators, tech directors, teachers, students and partners who have seen this product. BOXLIGHT's DeskBoard is a great tool for the classroom and is easy for the instructor to use. The real bonus is that DeskBoard allows students to participate at the board – in a classroom setting, or at an interactive desk – for a personalized learning environment," said Jeremy Peterson, BOXLIGHT Product Manager. BOXLIGHT has the ability to take this product offering a step further by providing serv- ice and technical support that other companies simply cannot provide. BOXLIGHT is serious about providing friendly and knowledgeable support 24/7/365 – this is tremendous peace of mind for customers and users around the world. BOXLIGHT's ability to respond to customer needs allows for personalized service and an unbeatable relationship with partners and customers. BOX- LIGHT is able to build products to spec- ification or customize product on an indi- vidual basis. BOXLIGHT operations encompass sales in the United States and worldwide. Headquarters are located in Belfair, Wash., with offices in Lawrenceville, Ga., Mexico City, Taiwan and China. BOXLIGHT products and services are available online at www.boxlight.com, by calling 360.464.2119. Text 'boxlight' to 51555 or 'deskb' to 51555 for DeskBoard prod- uct information. For more information, visit www.box light.com, call 360.464.2119 or stop by booth #817. KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL TABLET IMPLEMENTATION Amanda Jelen, fourth-grade teacher at Holy Redeemer School in Marshall, Minn. Holy Redeemer School, a Catholic K8 school in Minnesota, is focused on deliv- ering an educational environment that differentiates the learning experience for each child's specific needs. Part of that initiative involves giving every student, including those in kinder- garten, a tablet to engage them in their education. We had heard stories of failed tablet implementations in other schools, and were determined to avoid similar mistakes in our own rollout. Various aspects of the hardware were important, but to a certain extent a tablet is a tablet. Quite simply, an appro- priate tablet solution should enhance, support and simplify teaching and learn- ing. Here is our approach to a successful tablet infrastructure. Differentiated Learning An appropriate classroom solution will support the shift in instruction from whole class to personalized learning. It must deliver new and existing materials at the right pace and level for each child based on their specific needs. Maintaining Control Despite the obvious benefit of each child having a tablet, the nature of mobile devices means that teachers can feel they are losing control of the learning, as they can't see what each child is working on. Teachers should have an easy way to supervise and control student devices. An appropriate management portal should enable the teacher to see a thumbnail sketch on his or her own computer, show- ing what the children are doing on their tablets. If they are not doing class work, we need the ability to freeze the tablet. Likewise, when a student does something impressive, we should be able to push their screen image to a display or interac- tive whiteboard for whole-class discus- sion. Wireless Infrastructure Bearing in mind the amount of available learning content, and each school's own digital resources, adequate bandwidth is an important con- sideration during the rollout process. Training Once purchased, we established a "work- shop week" that included someone from the tablet supplier coming to the school to not only show the teaching staff how to use the technology but also to offer advice on getting the most from the tech- nology with the various students. Charging An important consideration is how to charge your tablet devices each day. In general, they should last the whole day but will need to be recharged overnight. We let our students take their tablets home. They are responsible for recharg- ing them. Classroom charging units are also available from most vendors. Implementation Select one class as the pilot site. In our school, that was my class. We made it clear to students and other teachers that technology can be unpredictable, so we would all learn together. I recommend that schools adopting a tablet program roll out the technology slowly, class by class. Any les- sons learned from one class can be shared with teachers in other classes, until the implementation is seamless. Broader Opportunities Many tablets come with built-in cameras, meaning QR codes can be used to struc- ture the learning. These tools offer a vari- ety of educational opportunities but they should be introduced only after both teachers and students are comfortable with basic use. BYOD Purchasing dozens of tablets is not an option for every school, in which case a "bring your own device" program could be considered. But tread carefully. Important legal considerations should be weighed. They include potential claims for indirect discrimination from students from low-income backgrounds, data pro- tection laws, the terms of your particular school's software licensing, repair costs and data roaming charges. For more information, visit www.learn pad.com, call 800.624.2926 or email sales@learnpad.com.