lot of the great things that we do on the field, but also a lot

of the things that we could improve on, and one of the

things that myself and my friend Charlie king saw as band members

was the massive amount of paper that we use every year.

It was like, what if we use tablets instead of paper, and we

had probably been talking about something like this before

because it's extremely frustrating, especially as

someone that's even a little bit conservation minded to see all

of the iterations, all of the hundreds of thousands of pieces

of paper that are printed.

So we decided, you know what if we made this work digitally

since that's where everything is going anyway.

And so as we developed our idea more we set up a meeting, a

presentation with the director, assistant director, some people

at the university, Digital First, and some other people at

the Arts and Sciences department, and they really

approved of the project, thought it was a great idea and said

"Let's move forward, let's give it a try".

They came to me, Charlie and Ryan, and said "We've got this

great idea, we waste so much paper around here" and I said I

agree, tell me what the idea is and they said "well, we can do

everything on the iPad".

It was really remarkable to see how well thought out they had

this whole plan for the iPads, from how they were gonna fund

it, how it would be sustainable over time, really how it would

reduce waste in the band and really to gain money back from

the lack of having to pay for paper or copying.

It was really incredible to see that two students brought that

to us.

We learn a new show every week, we have a lot of new things

coming out every week.

Time is critical for the marching band.

We only have two hours every day Monday through Friday for a

given week to put out a show that you see on a Saturday

afternoon.

And what we found was that the iPad was so intuitive that

students started innovating way outside of the bounds of what we

had envisioned originally.

The squad leaders have thought of things like videotaping the

marching band during rehearsal, a close up view of maybe how

their picking up their feet or snapping their turns, things

that are really critical and useful feedback.

We found this drill software that took in files from the

drill writing software that our directors already use, and turns

them into this animated drill that you get to watch.

So this has been probably the biggest innovation that we've

seen in our project from what we previously did in the marching

band.

It allows the band member to select their own marcher, see

their actual coordinate on the field as the formation is

transforming in front of them.

You see everything unfold right in front of you, which is

something that we've never ever been able to see.

So on a Monday when we go out to the field we already know what

the sets look like, we already know how the transitions look,

things that we would not get from paper.

It's gonna help the students reduce the stress they have of

learning that music, put out better shows on Saturday, and

improve the way that we do things on and off the field.

I'm really excited that we were really able to leverage a whole

team and resources across the university who came together

really quickly, and came together because they wanted to

help these students make a possibility a reality.

The students received a Sustainability Grant that made

it possible for them to buy the technology and to save and to

create a greener and more renewable, sustainable

environment.

And so, we worked with the Office of the Chief Information

Officer, the College of Business, College of Arts and

Sciences and we worked with the technology team to take a space

in the stadium that did not have internet access and turn it into

a wireless access point really quickly.

Arts and Sciences technology services played a role in

defining what kind of profile would be deployed to the iPads,

we helped deploy all apps that would be used with the band, and

we also helped to deploy and configure security on the iPads.

I think the best thing overall is that this was a student

initiative and a student idea.

And you know our motto around here is tradition through

innovation.

And not only did they come up with the idea, but they

instituted the idea, and made it work.

It's one thing to say "well, I have an idea, we should do

this", and it's a totally different thing to take the

leadership role and develop a program and create this whole

thing that has really revolutionized everything that

we do.