Plettenberg: That’s how many tablet schools you get

Finally, Plettenberg students also had the tablet computers ordered at the beginning of November. Final devices – 367 for students, 220 for teachers – are now being delivered to schools, starting at Zeppelin on Wednesday afternoon.

Plettenberg – Although there are more students in classroom lessons in schools in the interchangeable form, the need for devices remains. “Nothing is coming too late here,” said Sandra Nolch, head of Zeppelin on May 19, when the first boxes of iPads were delivered at KBOP in Böddinghausen. Deputy Dr. And Eberhard Strauben added: “If we have the devices, we work with them as well.”

First of all, it’s planned to keep iPads in school and work with the devices for hours in the classroom. The aim is to introduce the pupils to how to use the devices, which is better in the school, and this confirms the school management of the Zeppelin School. Students should also be aware of the hardware in case they need to return to distance learning. In this case, the devices will then be given to students.

Matthias Steinhof, Head of Internal Services in Plettenberg, was not completely satisfied with the timing of the delivery. He was criticizing the fact that it took too long. This is due to the common demand, which on the other hand made it possible to purchase more devices than was originally planned, ie 367 devices instead of 318 for school children.

The devices were ordered on November 4, a day after the board decided to award the contract. Frank Horms, head of the city’s IT department, said that individual municipalities submitted their orders earlier and thus received their devices earlier, perhaps due to the fact that council meetings were held there earlier or the volume of demand was less, so there is no board The decision was required.

27 cities and municipalities, including Plettenberg, participated in the tender via Südwestfalen-IT (SIT) in September and October of last year. A total of about 12,400 peripherals, i.e. iPads and laptops, were ordered for this bulk order.

In Plettenberg’s case, the iPads were only ordered because they were easier to manage, according to Hormes. With iPads, apps – that is, apps – can be installed almost simultaneously. “With laptops it would have been a lot more complicated.”

After the devices arrived on May 12th, they still had to be unpacked and put into the sleeve, the iPads themselves added to the city’s inventory, and last but not least, the required software installed. “That was the assembly line work.”

The cost to purchase the 367 student stations is € 162,907.93 – of which € 1,43478.90 comes from funding from Digital Pact NRW. The distribution to the schools is based on a key approved by the Plettenberg Schools. Accordingly, each school site receives 35 machines. Hauptschulleiterin Noltsch explains that the high school should receive the remaining devices, as her school will receive a total of 70 devices for students – 35 for the KBOP device and 35 for the site at Zeppelinstrasse. “It was important for us that each site had at least one classroom group. But that doesn’t cover the request yet.”

Matthias Steinhof, as the city representative, also sees it this way: “This wasn’t the last funding program.”

In addition to the student stations, 220 teacher stations including keyboards have also been ordered. The costs here: 106,952.71 € of which 99,500 € is subsidies. While the devices have been delivered to students in full, the delivery of teacher devices to schools should be completed within the next week.

Another building block in schools’ digital infrastructure is the universal provision of WiFi. According to Steinhof, this should happen by the end of the summer holidays, for which 390 thousand euros were planned from the digital agreement. “We only need formal notification of the grant, and we’re not allowed to start work in advance,” says Steinhoff.