Letter of September 25, 2013 for GSIS parents

1. September 25, 2013
Dear Parents of Grade 4 & 5 students,
Welcome back from Chuseok break! We are excited to move into this new stage of our
learning journey with your child and are thrilled to have iPads as a tool to enhance our
curriculum and your child's learning.
In the next few weeks, we will be familiarizing parents and students with the specifics of our
iPad program. We will offer several different parent sessions, some for parents alone and
some for parents and students to attend together. We will be providing details of the
ordering process and making those order forms available to you quite soon as our timetable
requires iPad orders to be placed by Friday, October 11.
To meet this deadline, we will have our first parent session next Wednesday night,
October 2, at 6:00pm in the Elementary Library, for all fourth and fifth grade parents.
(FYI: Fifth grade parents will have another meeting at 7 pm this evening regarding language
classes for middle school.) At this session, we will give you the necessary information for
ordering your iPads from our supplier. Students will be required to have a new iPad mini
with a minimum of 32 GB of storage. New iPad minis will come with Apple’s latest iOS7
installed. New Apple devices also are eligible to download Apple’s iWork suite of Pages,
Keynote and Numbers; as well as Apple’s iLife suite of iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band; for
free.
Although parents will be purchasing the iPads and apps, GSIS will install a number of free
apps for student use. Of course, this iPad is a family-owned device, so you are free to
purchase additional apps for your child’s use as you see fit. Students will have the ability to
personalize their iPad through your family iTunes account.
As a partner in your child's education, we recommend that you create a US based family
iTunes account. If you already have an account through which you can access the US iTunes
store, then this is not something you need to concern yourself with. If, however, you do not
have a US iTunes account, we will help you set one up during our information session on
October 2. We will also have several afternoons where parents can come to the Tech
Department for assistance in setting up this account.
We do realize that some of your children may already have iTunes accounts or, if not, that
they may tell you they are able to set them up on their own. Because this is a family-owned
device for educational use, GSIS feels it is important that the parents are ultimately in charge
of the iPad. Because of this, parents should create the account.

2. Below is the timeline we are following:
Wednesday, October 2
Parent meeting about iPad program and purchases
Friday, October 11
All orders for iPads should be placed
October 11 through October 28
Parent Exploration sessions to come and “play” with the devices
Monday, October 28
GSIS Tech Department begins setting up iPads
Monday, November 4
iPads are in the classrooms
Friday, December 13
iPads are sent home with students
And on a final note: we’re very excited your children will be participating in this engaging
experience. We are looking forward to embarking on this new adventure with you. Please
contact Mrs. Montgomery or Mr. Anderson with any further questions you may have and
we’ll see you on Oct. 2nd at 6 pm in the Elementary Library.
Sincerely,
Robin Montgomery
Media Integration Specialist
montgomeryr@gsis.sc.kr
031-695-2913
Daniel Anderson
Elementary Principal
andersond@gsis.sc.kr
031-695-2882