Windows 8 Pro Causing Delay In Deployment Of Tablets To TVHS Students
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
MENTONE – Four weeks into the school year and Tippecanoe Valley High School students still don’t have their Acer Tablets. Monday night, several parents attended the Tippecanoe Valley School Board meeting and asked what the hold up was. The problem, they were told, was software incompatibility. At the May school board meeting, the board approved for TVHS to be a 1-to-1 school starting with the 2013-14 school year. At a 1-to-1 school, all students have their own tablets for classroom and home use. Tablets may replace some or all textbooks. The school board approved the leasing of 750 Acer tablets for $132,772 per year for four years. Parents will pay $100 in rental fees each school year. Parents also will be offered a choice of insurance for the tablets. Last night, parent Chris Morehouse said she represented “tens of parents.” She wanted to know what the hold up was because parents already paid for the tablets but students don’t have them yet. She also said she paid fees for textbooks for every class and the tablet, though she thought the tablet was supposed to replace textbooks. In some of her kid’s classes, she paid for textbook rental but teachers told the students they wouldn’t use the textbooks. Superintendent Brett Boggs asked Morehouse if she took any of her concerns to TVHS Principal Kirk Doehrmann. Morehouse said she has once a week but he just keeps telling her he has no update for her yet. Interim Technology Director Keith Lang spoke later in the meeting about the hold-up, but any other concerns about tablets and textbooks could be answered by Doehrmann, Boggs assured her. Lang later said he’s been involved with the deployment of the tablets since July. Everything was set and ready to deploy except the student filter system. The filtering software is not compatible with Windows 8 Pro software on the tablets and causes every website to be blocked. He said he’s been in constant contact with the software company. He did research on it with other companies to see if there was a fix, but other companies are having the same problem. “I talked to five other vendors. They’re all in the same boat,” Lang said. One company said at this point they’re considering not supporting Windows 8 Pro at all. Board Vice President Mark Wise said he was disappointed the board didn’t learn of this problem earlier so it could have been avoided. All along, Lang said the representatives from the tech company said everything would be ready to go. When Board President Bryan Murphy asked if there was a time frame that the problem would be fixed and students would get their tablets, Lang replied, “I wish I could say.” Other solutions considered, Lang said, would take weeks. Parent Joe Secrist said parents haven’t been informed at all of what’s going on. At a previous parent meeting, parents were told everything would be OK. He said a letter needs to be sent out because there’s a lot of angry parents who have paid for the tablets but their children don’t have them. Once students do get the tablets, Morehouse also expressed concern with Internet access for the free and reduced lunch students. How are they supposed to get their homework done if they can’t access the Internet? Board member Rod Eaton said the board had all the questions Morehouse was asking. Dave O’Brien, board member, mentioned he did not know students had not received their tablets yet. Other board members said they knew and Boggs had sent out an email to the board members. “For a patron of this corporation, for the board not to know this was going on is disheartening,” Morehouse stated. Wise said he understood how some parents may want the tablets fee pro-rated since their kids have not received them yet. Secrist said the tablets need to be set up and set up right, but he repeated that parents need to be informed. Murphy indicated a letter will be sent out in the mail to all TVHS parents to let them know what’s going on with the tablets. Secrist suggested the board may also want to tell parents in the letter that they will be billed for insurance for the tablets once they get them. Some parents don’t know of that charge. Wise told the parents that until last night, no one has called him about the tablets. Eaton agreed, saying only students have asked him about them. Boggs said the company Tippecanoe Valley was dealing with was Lightspeed.
