tictech: Wired News :Lot to Learn About School Laptops

From: Peggy JS Yaplee (pjsoongyaplee@seattleschools.org)
Date: Thu Jan 10 2002 - 15:15:50 PST

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A note from Peggy JS Yaplee:

Hi folks, I found this article at www.wired.com
and thought you would be interested

pjsoongyaplee@seattleschools.org
============================================================

From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,49576,00.html

Lot to Learn About School Laptops
By Katie Dean

1:15 p.m. Jan. 9, 2002 PST
While Maine educators look forward to the day when students and
teachers will integrate one-to-one computing into their courses, they are
realistic about the patience, time and training that this ambitious project
will take.

No one knows that better than technology coordinator Crystal Priest.
All eighth graders in her district have been working with laptops for over a
year.

"It's going to be a massive, massive project," said Priest, who works
at School Administrative District #4 in rural central Maine. "As long as
people are fairly relaxed and really roll with the punches, everything is
going to be fine."

See also:
Maine Students Hit the IBooks
Gov's Laptop Plan Approved
Wireless PCs: Not Just for Cheats
Join the Cult of Mac
Maine Lines Up to Be Tech Mecca
It's time to go Back to School

After securing state funds for the project, Maine selected Apple to
equip all seventh and eighth grade students and teachers in the state with
36,000 iBooks. The program begins this fall.

S.A.D. #4 got a head start using laptops when a local manufacturing
company, Guilford of Maine, was inspired by Governor King's proposal and
offered to help supply their district with the computers.

The program has been very successful, after some initial hurdles.

"The summer of 2000 was very stressful for teachers because they
weren't sure what they were going to do with the laptops and how it would
work," Priest said. Now, "teachers are much more relaxed. People in this
building would be really upset if they had to give up their laptops."

Staff development over the summer, a paid three-day "boot camp," and
after-school re-certification classes all helped teachers learn to use the
technology and integrate it into their courses. Support from the
administration and the community was also essential, Priest said.

Now, the Piscataquis Community Middle School –- which serves 280 kids
in grades five through eight -- is a wireless network. All eighth graders
and teachers have a laptop, and extras are available for other grades to
share.

"It's opened up the whole world for us," Priest said. "We're in the
middle of nowhere. We can't just hop on the bus and go 15 miles down the
road to a museum."

Instead, students can take virtual field trips. They can read about a
historical event –- typically condensed into one paragraph in their social
studies textbook -- then get on the Web and see the actual battlefield where
the event occurred, read newspaper coverage, among other materials. A site
on Gettysburg is one of the governor's favorite examples.

While Priest is excited about the statewide plan, she's also realistic
about the challenges ahead.

"You can't move thirty-odd thousand laptops to 240 buildings built in
240 different ways without there being some glitches," Priest said.

The state is already making preparations for the transition.

At the end of February, nine schools –- one in each region of the
state -- will have one-to-one computer access that will serve as
demonstration sites.

Each of the 241 middle schools will select a lead teacher to serve as
a liaison to the department of education to help assess their staff needs
and professional development. Those teachers will get their computers first.

The state has also received a $1 million grant from the Gates
Foundation for teacher training and professional development.

Governor King admitted the change will be difficult for some: "We're
basically asking teachers to fundamentally re-think how they present the
material."

"Change is not easy for anybody. The reaction I've been hearing from
the education community is equally divided between enthusiasm and some
anxiety –- and it's not surprising," he said. "In many ways this is
uncharted territory. Nobody's ever done it on this scale before."

Thought daunting, it's an idea whose time has come, Maine educators
say.

"We've been working for a number of years with the computer lab model.
That model is almost self-defeating," said John Lunt, the technology
coordinator at Freeport Middle School and president of the Association of
Computer Technology Educators of Maine. "As more teachers were interested in
computers, it became harder to get lab time.

"If you can't get in to use the resource, you decide to use something
else. Teachers reverted back to the older ways without technology."

A computer lab "doesn't fundamentally change the role of technology in
teaching and learning," said Yellow Light Breen, a spokesman for the Maine
Department of Education. "It takes one-to-one access to make it a universal
teaching tool, just like a pencil and paper."