By Kelsey Braun ’22, Editor in Chief

Fall 2021 marks the first semester that every student at St. John Fisher College was given an iPad, Apple Pencil and a keyboard case to use for school.

The distribution of the devices began in August, when groups of students began to move on campus. Starting with student athletes, RAs, the orientation team, and other certain populations. However, it wasn’t until the first week of classes that the bulk of the devices were given to students.

“We did the big deployment during the first week of classes,” said Katie Sabourin, Director of the DePeters Family Center for Innovation and Teaching Excellence. “So, we deployed almost 1,500 devices in that week, Tuesday through Friday of that first week, and it went really smooth.”

Sabourin says that some of the days the library saw over 500 students per day pick up their device. She says on average about 72 students per hour went through the process of setting up their iPads in the library.

According to Sabourin, there is still a group of students that do not yet have their devices. Senior Jack Kelleher did not sign up to pick one up from the library.

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“I’ve been here for four years now, and I’ve never used one, so I’m not going to change it,” he said. “I don’t get to keep it at the end of the year, so it doesn’t really make a difference to me.” On the other hand, there are students who are excited and eager to see what possibilities the iPad will bring to their study habits.

“We’re excited to see what students do with the devices, what faculty do in the classroom with the devices and see how they can continue to grow things as time goes on,” said Sabourin.

So far, Junior Marc Giordano has used his to “mostly just look at blackboard to see my assignments.” 

“I use it for everything,” said nursing student, Emma Ballowe. “I use it for my notes, studying, to color, draw and whenever my teachers tell us to write down something in class.”

Brandon Lessig, senior marketing major has also found his iPad useful, “I use it for school on the daily. Mostly note taking, I read a lot of books and watch videos on it.” Both Ballowe and Lessig say all their professors have been using their iPads during their classes.

“We did deploy a lot of devices in a very short period of time, and it did go really well,” said Sabourin. “And students seem very excited about it.”