Whether it’s enough for the teachers or a full 1 to 1 program, tablet deployments are becoming more and more popular. Use these points from Brandon Hampton of Mobi Wireless Management, which has worked with schools to prepare for 1:1 adoptions, for some back-of-the-napkin math to get you started on a Return on Investment (ROI) calculation.

The Return:

We’ll start here, as it’s both the easiest and hardest to calculate. If your tablet deployment is part of a textbook replacement program, determining the ROI on eschewing textbook purchases from your budget is easy enough. If you are simply augmenting the learning experience of your students, quantifying increased classroom collaboration and your students’ newfound tech savvy is a much murkier calculus.

The Costs:

Enhanced wireless and bandwidth capacity: The more tablets you bring into your school, the greater the draw on your network, and school’s need to beef up their bandwidth capacity accordingly. “I’ve seen anywhere from a 50 percent increase to, one school I worked with increased it four times,” Hampton says. This also depends on how much you plan to let your students do with them. If they’re going to be streaming videos all the time, you’ll want to add as much bandwidth as possible. “The schools we’ve talked to have had to increase the bandwidth more than they’ve expected,” Hampton says.

Maintenance and Support: A lot of schools get grants to fund their tablet programs and think they’ve got the cost issue under control. Think again. “You’re talking about kids – I mean, how often is a glass-front tablet going to break?,” Hampton asks. Consider not just the cost of the repairs (more on that in a second), but about the number of IT staff hours that will be devoted to repair, not to mention troubleshooting. “How many calls can I expect, how many broken tablets can I expect to see in a week?,” Hampton asks again.

Warranty and Insurance: You can purchase different levels of warranties through your tablet company and you can insure them independently, but make sure you’ve got an accurate assessment of those costs before you proceed. Make sure, too, that you go with a reputable insurer; one woman at TCEA told TechDecisions that after just the first year of her district’s iPad deployment that they were already in the market for a new insurance company and it wasn’t even the rates: Poor communication and general unresponsiveness from her insurer was creating too many headaches and she already had enough on her plate.

MDM Software: Mobile Device Management software systems are designed to make your life easier, but they come with limitations – particularly on the iPad. Attendants at TCEA complained repeatedly and loudly about the administrative limitations posed by the iOS platform, even with the popular Casper MDM system. The MDMs aren’t free, but if you have an iPad deployment you will have very limited ownership of the apps that you purchase and distribute.

Liability: This is not just a theoretical risk, it is potentially a very real cost. At TCEA, one administrator after another reiterated that if your students are going to take their tablets or laptops home, you have no control over what content they will bring back into school with them. It is not enough that students click through a policy agreement, says Hampton. Develop a formal policy and make sure that the kids sign it; protect yourself as much as possible.