After being stuck in customs for over a month, the much anticipated iPad cases were distributed to Onsite students in Advisory last week.

Online students and younger grades had been given them prior to this shipment’s arrival. This is because the district had already started the process of going one to one with technology prior to COVID, and they were able to use iPads and cases given to the freshman last year while waiting for the others to arrive. 

“We’ve sped up to probably three or four year progress into one with the current situation of COVID,” Librarian Sarah Macumber said. “So they prioritized with remote students getting theirs first.”

Students had their iPads without the cases for six weeks before the cases arrived, begging the question of how many were broken during that time period. 

“We were very very nervous about the rate of having broken iPads without the cases because they are very fragile,” Macumber said. “I would have waited for the cases [to hand out the iPads], but at the same time I understand that a lot of teachers were focusing on a lot of their courses being online this semester, doing the hybrid, so it being very important to get the iPads to the students as well so it was a very… tough decision to make, and I’m glad I’m not the one that made it.”

Currently they have had about eight students bring in broken iPads to be repaired. Fortunately, all of them have been fixable so far. Students can turn them in at the library if they are broken, where they are then given to IT, they are then sent back to Apple to be repaired if IT can’t fix them. Students should expect it to take two to three weeks for their device to be fixed.

“We finally got some loaner iPads, that we’re able to check out to students while theirs is in the shop,” Macumber said. “There’s just a couple of [issues]…. we can’t have them sign into the manager app and, but it’s still functional as their iPad, while their original iPad is in the shop getting repaired. So that will supplement them so that they can still do their classes and still do their work at the same time until they wait for their one to come back.”

The cases have proved popular with many students, especially as the keyboards make writing significantly less time consuming.

“[My advisory students] were just so excited and happy,” Librarian McClendon said. “They’re really good sweet kids so they don’t always complain but, you know, I hear all the other stuff all the time like ‘teachers aren’t putting stuff on Canvas’ and this and that, but the iPads, they were all like ‘yeah these are great’.”

The iPads aren’t just a feature of this year’s hybrid and remote learning, however. The district will be fully one-to-one for the foreseeable future, so students shouldn’t expect Canvas to go away any time soon.

“It’s definitely interesting to see what our future could be like with the devices in hand,” Macumber said. “What all could come from this can be positive but also there are the negatives at the same time.”