Comments on: What if they all showed up tomorrow with laptops?

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:11:11 +0000

@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.

By: Raj

Raj — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:05:49 +0000

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.

By: Carey Pohanka

Carey Pohanka — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:18:04 +0000

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”.

By: Deirdre

Deirdre — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:08:09 +0000

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.