Dear Families,
As we prepare for the upcoming school year, we would like to share with you some updates regarding the technology devices provided to our students.
The changes introduced are the result of listening to our community and building on the experience of previous years. Our goal is twofold: to offer you and your children greater flexibility in personalising their learning tools, while simplifying the delivery and return processes by eliminating lengthy and complex end-of-year administrative checks.
Below you will find the details for each school level:
MYP 1 and MYP 2: Greater Freedom of Choice
Starting this year, the school will provide the iPad, while families will be free to choose the accessories (Apple Pencil, keyboard and protective case).
Why this change? In previous years, the mandatory return of worn, damaged or lost accessories often resulted in unpleasant charges and long queues during the end-of-year checkout process. From now on, everyone will be able to choose the accessories they prefer, purchase them wherever they wish, and keep them as their own personal equipment.
Over the coming weeks, we will send you a list of recommended products for your reference. For those who wish, the school’s standard protective cases will still be available for purchase from the School Office at a discounted price.
MYP 3: A Step Forward with the New MacBook Neo
Exciting news for our MYP 3 students! This year, students will no longer use an iPad but will move on to working with the brand-new MacBook Neo. This important technological upgrade reflects the natural progression of their learning journey, which requires increasingly powerful tools for creating and managing more complex content.
MYP 4 – DP 2: Continuity and Personalisation
For students in these year groups, the school will continue to provide a MacBook Air. In this case as well, to simplify the end-of-year return process and allow students to personalise the appearance of their learning device, the protective case will no longer be included as part of the school equipment and may instead be chosen freely by families.
A useful note when purchasing a case: the MacBook Air models provided by the school may vary in terms of processor (from M2 up to the latest M5), but they all have exactly the same external design. Therefore, any protective case compatible with the MacBook Air M2 or later models will fit all of them perfectly.
An Important Reminder: Caring for School Devices
The devices provided by the school are valuable learning tools. To ensure that they remain in excellent working condition throughout the students’ school journey, we kindly ask you to remind your children of one important rule for taking care of their computer or iPad.
Stickers, labels and writing: We kindly ask that no stickers, adhesive tape or writing be applied directly to the device itself. If students wish to personalise their device, the best way to do so is by decorating their own personal protective case.
At the end of the school year, all devices must be returned clean and in good condition. Should it be necessary to remove adhesive residue or writing, we will unfortunately have to charge the cost of professional cleaning (€80), or, if the damage to the device casing is irreversible, the full replacement value of the device. We are confident that, with everyone’s cooperation, these situations can easily be avoided.
Looking Ahead: Less Administration, More Innovation for Our Students
To give you an idea of how valuable this simplification is, last year our IT team had to manage more than 188 support tickets related exclusively to device returns and damage identified during the checkout process.
Reducing this significant administrative workload allows us to make an important strategic choice: redirecting the time and expertise of our IT specialists towards activities with a much greater educational impact. The school continues to invest heavily in innovation and, from September, students will benefit from several exciting new developments:
- the opening of our brand-new Quantum Lab, a state-of-the-art space dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT) and robotics;
- a new Computing Centre, enhanced to support projects involving Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs);
- special mobile Coding Trolleys, equipped with the latest Apple Neo programming devices, which will be available to all classes from MYP 1 and MYP 2 directly in their classrooms.
We are excited to focus our resources on technological excellence and on preparing our students for the future, leaving behind the old and complex processes involved in device management.
Should you have any questions or require further clarification, please do not hesitate to contact us.
We wish you a wonderful remainder of the summer.