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17 Sep 09

:. ICON .:

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29 Jul 09

Johnny Chung Lee - Human Computer Interaction Research

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Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops - New York Times

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ue to bring laptops into the classroom. Federal education officials do not keep track of how many schools have such programs, but two educational consultants, Hayes Connection and the Greaves Group, conducted a study of the nation’s 2,500 largest school districts last year and found that a quarter of the 1,000 respondents already had one-to-one computing, and fully half expected to by 2011.
Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.

24 Jul 09

"Cell phones aren't going away. Mobile technology isn't going away," he said. "Right now, what we're telling kids is 'You go home and use whatever technology you want, but when you get to school, we're going to ask you to step back in time.' It doesn't make any sense," he said.

Are One-to-One Laptop Programs Worth the Investment?

www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx - Preview

researchers concluded that “students in the laptop program improved in test scores from the prior year at about the same rate as other students in the district.” In other words, laptop programs do not raise test scores

Are One-to-One Laptop Programs Worth the Investment?

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Too often, instructional fads, in which laptop programs are sometimes included, forget to focus on the area of curriculum and content.

23 Jul 09

Review of State and National Laptop Initiatives

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Each of the 450 students in Howard Middle School has been issued a laptop computer. The school serves grades five through eight. While individual teachers and students have experienced some successes with the laptops, overall this initiative provides more lessons learned for other schools that will be starting laptop programs. Initially, the laptops had little tool-based software that the teachers were made aware of. (Most teachers were not even aware that the laptops contained a word processor.) Instead, students were expected to utilize a number of web-based content and testing providers. The drill-and-practice exercises did little to raise student interest or achievement. Rather than reforming educational practices in the school, the laptops tended to reinforce existing, traditional methods of teaching. The lack of appropriate inservice training and the isolation of the school (Howard is the only middle school in the county) meant that teachers had very little direction aside from the vendor presentations supplied by the web-based content and testing service providers.

Lessons learned:
Palm Beach County, Pine Crest School (Boca Raton)

Pine Crest is a private school in Boca Raton. All seventh graders are required to carry their own wireless laptop to school. Seventh-graders must sign up for a one-day mandatory laptop training course.

Costs: Pine Crest School parents must purchase the laptops for their children. The school is an authorized reseller for Gateway, IBM, and Dell laptops. Non-warranty repair provided by the school is charged at $50/hour. Student laptops must be dropped off at the school for configuration prior to the start of the school year. If they are dropped off before July, there is no fee for this service. Laptops dropped off in July incur a $100 "technology services fee." After July the fee rises to $250.
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- Minnesota, Mounds Park Academy
  
  According to a school profile on the Apple Education website, the curriculum at Mounds Park Academy "has received a radical, wireless-enabled upgrade that has empowered teachers and students to work anywhere within the school." All 300 students and faculty in the upper school use Apple iBooks. The teachers received their laptops in the spring of 2000, with the students receiving theirs in the fall of 2001. School administrators initially considered laptops to ease the heavy demand on the school's computer lab. After visiting other laptop schools, Bob Kreischer, the school's founder, realized that the laptops would also introduce innovative practices to the school and extend the school day into the home as students took their laptops home.
  
  The school's technology coordinator, Theresa Offerman, notes that the students "always have all of their 'stuff' with them, they're more organized, and they're not losing their assignments. Using the wireless iBooks has really changed the way everyone here thinks, as we're no longer confined to any one room or place."
  
  Outcomes:
  Teachers note that the quality of student research has improved.
  
  Students are devoting more time to their projects.
  
  Communication between parents and teachers has been enhanced.

Benefits

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"Developing the ability to learn independently, collaborate with peers to accomplish work, and communicate the conclusions of your work are the core of 21st century skills, and a highly valued set of competencies in the world outside of school. These accomplishments are seen in many laptop programs, especially those that permit students to take their computer home in the evening."
Laptop teachers were more likely to encourage student-led inquiry and collaborative work, while non-laptop teachers did not exhibit this trend.
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- 80% "I would rather
  use my laptop"80%"I am more likely to edit
  my work with a laptop"75% "Laptops help me be
  better organized"70% "Laptops improve the
  quality of my work"70%"I am more involved
  in school with a laptop"70% "I do more work
  when I use my laptop"70% "Laptops make school
  more interesting"
- Schools have reported a 100% participation in events that are prerequisite to laptop distributions.
- Rockman (2003) states that laptop schools typically "see higher attendance at PTA meetings; increased communication via e-mail, phone, or face-to-face meetings; parent participation in tutoring programs and parent-student computer classes offered through the school; and more volunteering at the schools."
- Some laptop programs have even instituted parent training on the laptops in an effort to contribute to the economic well-being of the community.

Costs

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Often teachers are taught how to use a program, but not shown how to integrate it into their curriculum. The knowledge gained in training quickly fades because it is not put to use in the classroom.
The first tier is the end-user. Both students and teachers should receive a short training in trouble-shooting and problem-solving frequently encountered glitches. Students, teachers, and parents must be provided with training that includes basic operation, troubleshooting, and proper care of the laptop.
10 more annotations...
- The second tier of support should be a skilled individual at the school site. This person should be able to deal with software and most network issues. Routine hardware tasks such as the replacement or upgrading of memory chips should be done at the school level. The fall 2003 STaR Survey reports that 93% of Florida schools already have on-site technical support. Of these schools, 91% have a technical support person, who is able to maintain and troubleshoot hardware and software and perform network administration.
- The third tier of support is the district. Non-routine hardware problems and difficult network issues should be handled at this level
- the Task Force recommends that teachers embrace project-based learning with technology, which requires only a short amount of time doing targeted research on an assigned problem. The majority of the time is then spent in writing, designing, and producing a product--activities that do not require network access.
- Reducing the reliance on printed textbooks will provide funds to create free online content in many areas and result in substantial savings that can be applied to the support of a laptop initiative.
- All documents (handouts, activity sheets, tests and quizzes, supplementary materials, etc.) that teachers create for students can be delivered electronically in a 1:1 classroom.
- In a 1:1 laptop classroom, projects can be entirely digital from start to finish, so no printing costs (paper and toner) are required. An added benefit is that, unlike printed products, digital projects can all be done in color at no additional expense.
- over $15 per student per year could be saved
- Laptops would afford students access to current, free maps on any part of the world
- Science charts and other visuals.
- One-to-one laptops will eliminate the need for many existing computer labs in Florida. Re-purposing these labs as classrooms will produce a tremendous savings in new construction costs across the state.

20 Jul 09

Professor Seymour Papert

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EBSCOhost: THE FUTURE OF COMPUTERS AND 1:1 LAPTOP INITIATIVES

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When computers receive limited use or inconsistent deployment across classes, it makes little sense to expect any kind of return on the investment in technology, especially in relation to student achievement. The low and sporadic use of computers calls attention to questions of teacher buy-in, school readiness, and whether the technology is even a meaningful part of the curriculum.

19 Jul 09

Report of the Laptops for Learning Task Force

A 102-page report created by a Florida task force commissioned to provide recommendations on the possible implementation of a 1:1 laptop initiative in Florida.

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Acceptable Use Policy - Classroom 2.0

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The Peck School, where I was tech head, we came up with the acronym "LARK" - all computer use at the school had to be L - Legal, A - Appropriate, R - Responsible and K - Kind.

TeachPaperless: February 2009

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First things first: you have to stop the behavior. I collected the offending emails in my class via a tried and true method: SynchronEyes and a friendly in-house IT guy. Then, one morning, without announcing what I was going to do, I projected the offensive emails (names blocked out) onto my wall. When the students arrived, I was nowhere to be found and my students entered a dark room lit only by the glow of the vitriolic digital dispatches.