[Yr7-10it] RE: Year 7-10 IT structures

[Cameron Bell]

But Bill, lots and lots of schools have implemented laptop programs - 
some for many years now. We have found that you don't need one laptop 
per child - in fact, I believe that insisting each child having their 
own laptop can stifle pedagogical progress. When each child has their 
own laptop or they are working in a lab, the teacher is generally just 
using the same teaching techniques and lesson plans they always have, 
insisting on personal work, students working in isolation 
(communicating, but in isolation) with the whole class doing the same 
activity at the same time. The laptop struggles to break out from being 
a glorified word-processor, file storage and email client to the off the 
shelf tool that gets used as needed, to develop a solution for the 
problem at hand.
We have run with a one-between-two program here for the past couple of 
years (I was skeptical as I had just come from a 1-1 school) and apart 
from a couple of dedicated labs, we now deliberately aim for 
one-between-two for all our technology infrastructure. It means students 
_must_ collaborate as teams on producing work and we are being forced to 
develop methods for students to be able to collaborate- but then produce 
work that reflects their own knowledge, not the groups knowledge. It's 
tricky but I have found a very useful little tool that enables that to 
happen in my classes and the rest of the staff have adapted too! Some of 
us are creating digital portfolios, this requires group prac work, but 
individual reflections. How do you do this with one-between-two? You are 
forced to examine individual learning plans, multiple lesson plans 
within a lesson, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach that we have 
always done. (Primaries have done this for years!) While 1/2 the class 
use the laptops for part of an activity, the other 1/2 are doing another 
part. For us, this is also essential to break up a 72 min period and 
help keep the students focussed.
One between two is cheaper too!  ;-)
Cheers
Cameron

Bill Kerr wrote:
> There is a large elephant in the room that no one has referred to so 
> far: the OLPC
>
> The one laptop per child non profit project not only plans to deliver 
> millions of laptops to third world children but has also become a hand 
> grenade in the commercial world - and has succeeded in forcing down 
> the price of other laptops now on offer
>
> "... the whole global mind-think around technology has changed.
>
> No longer is low cost computing in education a fantasy, no longer are 
> big technology companies secondary, and everyone wants to sell 
> technology into classrooms. Intel introduced Classmate PC 
> <http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/brazil/olpc_classmate_mobilis.html> 
> to Brazil, Asustek is selling Eee PC's 
> <http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/intel/negroponte_100_laptop_asus.html> 
> in the USA, and even thin-client manufactures compare themselves to 
> OLPC 
> <http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/competition/stephen_dukker_anti_olpc_campaign.html>."
> http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/countries/sales_inhibiting_xo_distribution.html
>
> How will schools and education departments in the wealthy west react 
> to the fact that in a few years we will have the capability for every 
> child to have their own laptop?
>
> Will we treat them like mobile phones and ban them or try to figure 
> out a way to utilise them for optimal educational development?
>
> The use and misuse of computers in schools has up until now been based 
> around the idea that computers mainly belong in labs and / or that 
> access is limited. The fact of limited access has acted as a powerful 
> brake for many teachers not to extend their knowledge much beyond the 
> basics.
>
> Most (all?) of the maths curriculum could be taught using laptops. In 
> fact MIT produced a series of books in the 80s for teaching much of 
> maths and aspects of language and art using logo.
>
> Shouldn't we factor this potential into the discussion? If we are 
> talking about the future it might be incorrect to assume that the 
> pattern of distribution of computers in schools will remain similar to 
> the present.
>
> -- 
> Bill Kerr
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
>
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