Pennsylvania District Turns to Outside Help To Prep 1-to-1 Devices

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 01/20/16

When a district in Pennsylvania faced the prospect of sending students from one of its middle schools in three directions while an extensive mold mitigation project replaced its facilities, the district chose to outfit the students with Chromebooks for digital learning. The School District of Cheltenham Township is still dealing with a 2013 discovery of mold in Cedarbrook Middle School. While a new facility is targeted to open in fall 2017, students, teachers and staff have been relocated to two leased sites as well as the high school.

Because of the rushed nature of the deployment of computing devices, the district's in-house technology division lacked the capacity to prepare the Acer Chromebook 11 C740 devices for distribution in a tight deadline. So it turned to Troxell Communications, an education technology service provider, to handle unboxing, updating the software, registering each device on the management console, asset tagging, inserting the machines into the charging cart and delivering the loaded carts to each location.

"We have a small technology department, and Troxell's handling of the entire process was a great time saver for our personnel and exactly what we needed," said Tim McCleary, the district's supervisor of technology. "And they actually beat our tight deadline."

Now the Chromebook count has grown from 300 devices to 2,000 across the district, all of which has gone through what McCleary called the company's "white glove" service.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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