I wanted to add a couple of things to this conversation. When interviewing teachers around the U.S. and overseas the overwhelming response has been "we would not want to go back to not using laptops." And when I surveyed students around the U.S. and 5 countries, over 700 responses so far, the overwhelming response has been "we want to learn with laptops." Also, back in May 2007 the New York Times reported on 5 laptop programs that were discontinued. Several colleagues and I independently looked into the schools mentioned and the commonality was 1. leadership was not behind the program 2. very little continual professional development of teachers ensued 3. tech support was cut back and nearly non-existent 4. little happened in the classroom other than note-taking (see 1,2,3) and 5. student expectations were not clear. What school-wide innovation or improvement initiative would survive 1,2,3,4 and 5?
As to the platform/hardware issues, when I interviewed teachers/tech directors back in 2005/06 the word was "same platform/same model" and the reason was complexity of support. Now it might be different and the reason is "the cloud" plus any hardware manufacturer selling to schools absolutely should have an extended warranty - and ought to in some way give advice on damage or loss of equipment. I know before Jim Hendrixx went to the American School in London, he had multi-platform going quite successfully at the Oregon Episcopal.
The Urban School/Howard Levin had a really interesting take on getting laptops. They polled their parents and asked who either devoted a computer to their child or was planning to do so. A really high percentage said yes they would. Urban School said let us buy the computers, let us load them with the applications, let us use them in the classroom, and one device will go from home to school. Howard gives some really cool presentations which include sample screenshots of how students customize their laptops with folders, colors, etc. because - they own the learning, the tool for learning, the structure, the access, the retrieval, the whole thing. It's not distributed and taken away for 40-60 minutes, it's theirs all the time.
So I guess you can see where I stand on this (grin) and hi Joel, Gary, Christina, Peter, Alex and everyone by the way. It is always a pleasure by the way to interact with you all!
Best regards,
Pamela
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Pamela Livingston
http://www.1-to-1learning.blogspot.com
http://www.pamelalivingston.com
Author of "1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work"
Twitter: plivings
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