Ch. 7- Lessons Learned About Providing Laptops for All Students

Schools all over the country are starting to move to getting aptops or iPads for the classroom creating one-to-one computing. This process can be more complex and challenging than most people think because there are a lot of areas that need to be considered and taken care of to make this all happen and run the right way. The Northeast and the Islands Regional Technology in Education Consortium wrote a paper About the different Easton's learned from laptop programs that have already been started. Some of the key lessons learned were about planning, training and professional development, hardware and software, managing change, and program monitoring and evaluation. There hope with this article is that other schools will learn and when they start there own laptop programs they will not run into the same problems as others. One of my favorite quotes from this papr was from a woman by the name of Bette Manchester, who said, “it is not about the technology; it is about the students’ learning and about capacity building in the schools." whether this is everyone's view or not it probably should be. One aspect of this process that I felt was really important was that change needs to be expected to be gradual. There are so many different parts of this program to set up and put in place before this can run smoothly and with the effects that the school would want so it is important to be patient and wait for everything else to get set up and fall into place before everything can run perfectly.
This article fits right along side chapter seven and a lot of what we have talked about in class. They both discuss the different procedures and steps that are involved in setting up technology in the classroom. The chapter in the book gives a good understanding Of how important planning is and that goes right along with this paper written and the points they were trying to make also. It is important for a technology coordinator and teachers as well to take time and learn as well as teach new technology brought into the classroom so that everyone can get the full learning experience out of this type of instruction. It is about using the tools to teach the children in the most effective ways possible and this takes time to implement new teaching styles worth technology, but it can be done with good planning, teaching, and follow through.