Barrington 220 Board of Education Approves New iPads

At the meeting on Monday, January 31, 2022, the Barrington 220 Board of Education unanimously voted to enter into a new iPad lease for the next three years (2022–25). This means that Barrington 220 will upgrade our iPad devices for all students and certified staff for next school year. This decision followed a semester-long device study conducted by the Department of Technology and Innovation with the District Technology Committee. 

In previous school years that include device upgrades, the district Tech Team has been able to swap iPad devices with new models at the end of a school year so students and staff in Summer School can use our new devices, and we can begin the following school year without a device swap disruption. However, due to supply chain issues and greatly increased shipping times, we may be unable to complete all swaps by the end of this school year. Of course, we will do our best to roll out new devices in the least disruptive manner possible given the timeframe we have after the iPads arrive.

Our new iPad devices will be the Generation 9 model (we are currently using the Generation 6). The new iPads have several upgrades, including, but not limited to:

• A13 Bionic chip with Neural Engine (upgraded from our current A10 Fusion chip). The Neural Engine allows new features such as Live Text so photos of text are automatically converted to text that can be copied and pasted into typed documents (it also works on handwriting if it’s legible).
• The front and back cameras are both 12MP, a major upgrade to our current iPad 6 cameras (8MP back and 1.2MP front cameras).
• Storage on the iPad 9 is doubled to 64GB (from 32GB on the iPad 6).
• The touchscreen is larger at 10.3 inches (diagonal), compared to the 9.7-inch screen of the iPad 6.
• The battery is still rated at 10 hours of use when fully charged.
• Complete Technical Specifications for the iPad Generation 9 are available here. Also check out the Apple Education page highlighting the iPad Generation 9 here.

The new iPads will come with new cases with a design similar to our current cases. We will get the STM Dux Plus Duo model cases with the following features:

• Exceeds U.S. Military-Standard drop tests
• Magnetic closure
• Transparent back for asset tagging
• Integrated storage to accommodate a Logitech Crayon (or Apple Pencil)

We are also purchasing new Logitech Crayons for all students and staff to replace those currently in use. We will keep and test our functioning old Logitech Crayons for use as replacements and harvest parts for future repairs.

Our shipments are currently predicted to begin arriving in mid-April. Upon delivery, we will have in-house processing to complete—unpackage iPads, cases, and Logitech Crayons; barcode iPads; install cases on iPads. After processing we can begin delivering to schools, collecting old iPads, and distributing/setting up new iPads.