Acer Aspire One by yum9meOne of the students in my Biology 20 class this semester has a laptop which he uses as a learning support. He has dyslexia and the word processor greatly increases his ability to communicate in written form, as well as my ability to read it. One of the other students in the class asked if they could use a laptop in class if they brought it from home. My immediate reaction was “Sure – that seems only fair to me”.
So I’m wondering what I would do if they all showed up tomorrow with their own laptop? There are a few stores in town where I could walk in and pick up a netbook for under $400. That’s enough for many of my students to find funding for it from parents, savings, job earnings, allowance – kids seem to have many financing options available to them.
There is often discussion at school or division level planning regarding one to one laptop programs, and most of these are built on an assumption that schools will need to provide the laptops for the students. Maybe that’s an assumption that is no longer to be taken for granted. My daughter recently bought herself a Nintendo DS with savings from some Christmas money and her allowance. The cost of a DS (or Wii or XBox or PS3) is not too far off the cost of a low level laptop. I think that in January 2010 or 2011, we’re going to see a majority of my students (in high school, but I don’t think elementary will be too far behind) show up for school with a laptop in their hand and an expectation that they’ll be able to use it in school. There will need to be some dramatic and sudden changes in school/division infrastructure and policy to be able to deal with that.
But that won’t help me if the students in my class all decide that they’re going to pick up a laptop tonight and bring it to class. If they all show up with a laptop tomorrow, what can/should I do to make the best opportunity for them to learn? I think that ignoring the technology is not going to be to the benefit of any of my students or me. How will I need to change the way I teach, not just tomorrow but the ongoing change needed? What would I tell colleagues who ask the same questions and are looking for some very concrete advice, not just theoritical background?
I hate to tell you this but I was an observer in a university class where most of the students had laptops. I sat at the back and watched them do everything but class work even though the prof was trying to engage them in learning. The immediacy of friends and war games was too compelling. Smile.
I had a moment like that a few months ago. I have a few students who use personal laptops for learning support as well. One day, we were fighting for space in the computer lab and one of my students said, “I have a laptop at home. Can I bring it in tomorrow so we have plenty of computers?” Next thing I knew I had half of my students offering the same thing. I didn’t really know what to do with that. What a great idea! But we don’t let laptops that are not “school” ones have access to our network or internet. But I felt like a gigantic idiot telling them no. We don’t have the money to have laptops for all of our middle schoolers. So why aren’t we taking advantage of the computers they already have? I understand that we have to control the network, but why are we stopping students from using tools they already have and use at home regularly?
To answer if they all had laptops tomorrow…the answer is use them to connect with the world, not just an “expensive pencil and paper”.
If all the students showed up with a laptop tomorrow… hmm… what about the cell phones that they have today?? Ok, that is a different argument.
But if they all arrived tomorrow, I think there would be very few teachers who would be agile enough to find ways that students could make use of the laptop in useful ways. Many teachers, after about grade 3 become very chalk and talk and instead of interacting with notes, as a laptop would encourage, many teachers, I think would merely have students type out notes.
The “good” thing is that these devices might not be here “tomorrow”, but certainly in the next couple of days and then, like it or not, teachers, schools and even curriculum will have to change or face one heck of an uproar. Personally, I can’t wait. So much of the “resistance” to ICT integration has been based on price and complexity, but when you have preteens grabbing these devices and running them well enough to share photos/video and files with each other, the resistance seems very futile.
@deirdre That’s an interesting observation considering the current push to initiate laptop programs. I know nothing about the class you were in bu I think the size and physical arrangement of a classroom would help to mitigate some of the off-task behaviour. Looking back through the eons at my university days, I remember a lot more off-task behaviour in university than high school. University instructors in most classes (especially in the large capacity lecture theatres) don’t have the opportunity or desire to monitor what students are doing.
@Carey I agree about the control of access sometimes being an issue, although I understand the concerns of IT staff to protect against malware (viruses, trojans and worms) and unauthorized access. There are plans in my school to set up a firewalled public network that would give anyone internet access but still maintain security. In this case, they would be able to connect to the world. So once they are connected, what do we do? The possibilities are overwhelming but if a teacher came to me with this problem, what would be the best thing I could offer them as a starting point.
@Raj I agree that “chalk and talk” being the default teaching mode in high schools (I can’t speak from personal experience about grades 4 –
and I admit being guilty of this sometimes although I try to avoid it. I agree the long term changes are going to be to the benefit of student learning, but where do classroom teachers start moving that way? What should our first step be once the ubiquity of access becomes an overwhelming impetus to change? I used to consider this as a theoretical question to be solved in the long run, but I am becoming more convinced that “the long run” will be much shorter than I thought it would be.