1. For more information about the Amplify System, please email access_sales@amplify.com or call (800) 823-1969. 1
www.amplify.com/tablet
CASE STUDY:
Ilwaco Middle School
Location
Ilwaco Middle School, part of the Ocean
Beach School District, is located in
Ilwaco, a quiet coastal community in
Washington state.
Enrollment
240 students in grades 6-8; 70% qualify
for free and reduced lunch. Ethnic/racial
diversity: 75% Caucasian, 16% Latino, 2%
Asian, 7% two or more races.
Technology
Rolled out the Amplify System to all
students and staff in mid-September. Prior
to that, students had access to laptop carts.
Funding
The 1:1 implementation was endorsed by
the Ocean Beach district superintendent
and technology director, and then approved
by the school board. It was funded through
local tax levies specifically earmarked
for technology upgrades within the
school district.
The Challenge:
Re-establishing a middle school’s identity
Principal Marc Simmons says his middle school was stuck in an identity crisis of
sorts—for seven years it had shared a building with a high school, and he worried that
his seventh- and eighth-graders as well as his faculty were feeling lost in the crowd.
Not the kind of experience the students needed, given how challenging the middle
school years can be in general. There was no glue holding the middle school together,
it seemed.
In addition, the school lacked the kind of technology offerings Simmons felt his
students needed to prepare for their future. He knew of other schools that had made
the leap to 1:1 learning—some successfully and some unsuccessfully—but his school
was still using laptop carts, and they just weren’t enough anymore. Instead of taking
advantage of apps and online resources anytime, anywhere, students were restricted
to the times a laptop was available for check-out.
Simmons worried that students felt uninspired by the curriculum and that the grading
system they used was antiquated, leaving students unsure how they were actually
performing at school.
Simmons felt it was time for some tough questions and most likely some disruption.

2. For more information about the Amplify System, please email access_sales@amplify.com or call (800) 823-1969. 2
www.amplify.com/tablet
“This was our opportunity to develop our preferred future,” he recalls. “We needed to ask, ‘How do we get inspired? What do
we want to be as a middle school? We needed to build a new vision.”
The Solution:
A full school transformation, which included going 1:1 with the Amplify System.
After many discussions with faculty, students and the parent community, Ilwaco’s vision for its future was this: a true middle
school, with just grades six through eight under one roof; a 1:1 initiative that would deeply integrate technology with everyday
instruction and learning; a more diverse set of course offerings with students’ true interests in mind, and a more detailed
method of measuring student performance.
The school fought for and won the right to take sole ownership of the building that was originally built just for middle
schoolers, and grades 9-12 returned to their old building. The middle school then convinced the district school board that 1:1
learning was not just a nice-to-have but a need-to-have, to keep students engaged and also on track for college and career
readiness.
Hand in hand with that decision, the school introduced an
innovative twist to its weekly course offerings: a program
called Pathways, in which Fridays are devoted solely to
two-hour elective courses that range in subject from archery
to culinary arts to moviemaking to outdoor survival, with all
courses incorporating technology in some way.
Making the Amplify choice
Once funding for a 1:1 initiative was secured, school and
district administrators spent many weeks researching
solutions. They knew the technology piece would be key to
building a better school, Simmons says, and were determined
to choose the right partner.
“Our neighboring district got iPads a couple years ago, and there were several concerns about the vehicle/medium,” Simmons
says. “They said they couldn’t call attention to the kids, who were off-task and distracted. We didn’t want to make the same
mistake.”
The Amplify System was a hands-down winner, Simmons says, because it is designed specifically for education. Ilwaco
wanted a solution that included classroom management and assessment tools for teachers as well as collaboration tools and
personalization features for students. They found all of it built into the Amplify System.

3. For more information about the Amplify System, please email access_sales@amplify.com or call (800) 823-1969. 3
www.amplify.com/tablet
The Amplify System in action
Since Ilwaco rolled out the Amplify System in mid-September, teachers and students find new ways the tablets have made a
difference in everyday learning. It has touched every aspect of the school’s transformation, Simmons says.
The Pathways program is extremely popular among students and teachers, and the Amplify System is “one of the pillars” of
Pathways, as it seamlessly integrated into the program, and without much effort.
“It is just a natural extension, whether the Pathways course is moviemaking, photography, even a topic like mountain biking—
how do you replace a bike chain? The students use their tablets to research that and see how it’s done.”
In traditional classes during the week, teachers have eagerly incorporated the tablets, using the classroom management tools
and access to endless resources to take their lessons farther and deeper than they say they could in the past.
Teacher Kelly Jacobsen begins her humanities class by having students watch CNN Student News on their tablets. She then
posts a question about a news item on the tablets’ Discussion board. Students type their answers to the question and respond
to their classmates’ answers. She also shares news articles from the site Newsela, then follows up with Common Core-aligned
questions like “What was the author’s purpose?”
Jacobsen says the Amplify System gives the term “formative assessment” a whole new meaning. Quick polls and quizzes
that can be created and administered in an instant allow assessment to be part of everyday classroom practice, so teachers
always have a pulse on students’ understanding. This enables them to go deeper in their evaluation of student performance,
particularly with a new standards-based grading approach they implemented this year, Simmons says.
“The instructional tools, the assessment tools, it all just integrates wholeheartedly in what we do,” he says. “It’s only been two
months, but it is hard to imagine going back to doing things the way we did before we had them.”
Simmons says the Amplify System is helping Ilwaco establish its new identity as a true middle school. “We have a culture of
technology and innovation we are implementing,” he says. “The sixth- through eighth-graders see their tablets as something
that sets them apart from other schools. They have expressed a sense of pride when referring to the tablets, and feel
privileged.”