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Why 1:1?
By Mike Hasley | May 14, 2009
I read this today, What’s the purpose of going 1:1, and thought it was very appropriate though this is our 3rd cycle of laptops.
Utecht hits on a few points that I think are important to repeat here:
What do you want students to do?
If our purpose is student learning than all decisions should start by answering this question. What do we expect students to do with their laptops? What kind of experience do we want them to have? What learning do we hope to see/expect from them when the laptops are in use. Starting with what you want students to do with the laptops allows you to create a plan that will support their use.
What do teachers need to know?
Once we know what type of learning we want to see from the students we can then talk about a Professional Development plan that allows teachers to know what they need to know to make that learning a reality. Sure they YOU are going to have to learn some skills, some tools, but more than that they YOU will need support in understanding how the classroom changes with those tools. When every student is sitting at a desk and has the knowledge of the world in front of them, it changes the classroom. How do we I support teachers YOU, help teachers YOU, and train teachers YOU to teach facilitate in that environment?
Imagine the class you want to have . . . are you there, or far from it? Do these laptops help you get there or not? If they do, why aren’ t you there?
Topics: 21st Century Skills, Best Practices, Discussion, laptops | 5 Comments »
I am planning on making my class about 90% online next year. I will have blog questions, research topics, and presentations that they will be able to explore. I am also going to have the students monitor other websites, blogs, and wiki pages. One thing that I have been doing and hopefully will get the kids creative juices flowing will be to have the work with thehistorybluff.com creating historical fiction.
interesting, but seems to be the same “stuff” we’ve read before.
Thanks for remixing this. I like the substitution of YOU for teachers.
No problem. Glad you noticed it.
seems like these questions have to be reassessed and answered every year. True, the kids always have laptops, but the software changes, and so does our knowledge base and familiarity with online resources. We don’t want to use laptops like hi-tech text-books, so it’s up to us to make sure that we’re innovative with our instruction every year. Whats Moore’s law – that technology grows exponentially and doubles every 18 months? Thats quite a learning curve to keep up with