Living and Learning in Central Oregon

I clipped the part about kids not bringing their laptops to school each day because teachers don’t encourage their use. From my experience the teacher PD needs to happen first before any laptops are given to kids.

clipped from www.dallasnews.com Lighter laptops may also help combat student complaints about the computers being too heavy to carry to school. District surveys have shown that many students don’t bring their laptops to school every day – but that’s also because teachers don’t always encourage their use. The high schools plan to conduct meetings and set goals to improve student use of the laptops. A key goal is to improve training for teachers. Mr. Hill said one challenge is that some teachers continue to resist using laptops in class. Owen DeWitt, a former school board member who pushed for the laptops, said more affordable units should have been looked at from the beginning. “We were spending huge dollars for something that wasn’t well adapted yet for any of the regular high schools,” he said. “You’ve got to weigh functionality vs. cost.”

SMART has online tutorials that are quick two-minute presentations of SMART Board basics.  They are a great way to familirize yourself with the features and uses of a SMART board.  Visit http://smarttech.com/trainingcenter/tutorials.asp

Tech Learning has a good article to help out 1:1 classrooms. Check it out here

Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer is one of the blogs that I monitor regularly.  Wesley recently posted a draft of a presentation on 1:1 and School 2.0.  Being in the middle of a 1:1 project myself I took the time to listen to his podcast.  Everything he discussed and the visions he described are exactly what I am aiming for at my school.  We are a few weeks out before our 6th graders get the laptops and my biggest concern has not been handing thirty 12 year olds a $1600 machine.  Rather, staff development, or lack thereof has been my biggest concern. If our 1:1 project is going to resemble anything like what Wes discusses we are going to have to increase staff development dramatically. And if I want my school start moving toward School 2.0 the whole staff has to be trained. I think this is true for my school and all schools.  I find the tech literacy skills our teachers very lacking. In general they do not know what could be, they are too burdened with how things are and in the day to day regimine.  But it is not their fault.  It is the fault of school leadership (me included) and the lack of resources allocated to transform our school from 1.0 to 2.0.   Take a listen to Wes’ podcast.  It will make you think.

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/02/01/podcast122-the-case-for-11-and-school-20-draft/