Is your school ready?

1:1 - What is it? Is your school prepared? Are your community members informed and supportive? The questions go on and on. The 1:1 initiative is all about giving laptops to students. 1:1 literally means one laptop per student. Most of us have heard of schools like Westside in Omaha who have started buying laptops for students as young as fifth grade. Those students carry the laptops with them all year long and check them in at the end of the year. They are then maintained throughout the summer and handed back out in the fall.

There are many items to take into consideration when considering 1:1. When the topic of 1:1 and school preparedness is discussed in our meetings here at the service unit, I ask participants to consider many factors. Are your classrooms equipped with whiteboards and projectors? Is there enough electrical capacity to charge the laptops when the batteries are low? Do you have a network that will support a large amount of wireless clients? Just because you have a wireless network does not mean it will support a surge in wireless activity. Your school may need to upgrade its current network to be able to handle this surge. Your school may also need to increase the number of wireless devices so it can handle more clients.

What about your staff? Does your staff have the adequate skills and knowledge to teach with technology? Getting the technology in the students' hands is only a matter of purchasing laptops. Your staff will need to know what to do with the laptops in the classroom. Teaching in a 1:1 environment looks and feels much different than teaching in a classroom with just one computer. Students will want to use the laptops for everything, so as teachers, we must be able to find ways to transform what we teach into digital content. Does your school currently subscribe to a Learning Management System such as ANGEL? ANGEL allows teachers to post online content that is available 24/7. Teachers can post assignments, assessments, and notes from the classroom on ANGEL. ANGEL has many other classroom uses besides these mentioned, but it is important that schools think about learning outside the classroom when adopting a 1:1 program.

Is your community in support of this project? You have to remember that tax payer dollars are largely funding this initiative. Therefore, it is necessary to have community support to keep this project ongoing. Do you have a plan for getting your community members involved?

What about future funding? Do you have a plan for sustainability? Once a school begins the 1:1 program, it is difficult to stop. A school may have the funding to buy laptops for students now, but what about the future? The life span of a laptop is about three years. What is your replacement plan?

Lastly, why are you considering buying laptops for students? Is it because other schools are doing it? Is there a plan to collect data showing an increase in student learning since the laptops were purchased?

As you can see, this list of considerations is long. I am not opposed to buying laptops for students. I am a big supporter of using technology with students. Students are wired for it. However, without proper planning and support, this program could fail at your school. I have visited schools and talked to professionals who have adopted this program, and they tell me the 1:1 implementation is a two to three year process: get your classrooms ready, get your staff trained, and then start handing laptops out to students.

The Nebraska Department of Education has a great site for schools looking into buying laptops for students. For more information, please check out their Laptop Initiative site at http://www.nde.state.ne.us/techcen/NebraskaLaptopInitiatives.htm.

As always, I'd be interested in hearing your comments. Please feel free to email them to me: grobke at esu4.org or you can post a comment on this blog.

ESU 4 Midyear Inservice Handouts

If you came to my web 2.o presentation at the ESU 4 midyear Inservice, then you've found the right place. Below is a link to my presentation. Feel free to use it however you like. If you would like the actual keynote file, please send me an email. Thanks!

http://www.esu4.org/midyear09/web20preso.mov

January 2009

Two things...well, Actually three!

There are two things I would like to share with you in the space I have available - a myeLearning of NE update and the ESU annual Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship Contest.

myeLearning of NE, the organization that brings you ANGEL, has created a new community group called "The Nebraska Community of Shared Content (NCSC)." This statewide community group will host vendor-based course content that will range from complete, pre-designed courses to individual course objects. Districts will be able to utilize this group to enhance their current online course content to begin an online content program. Curriculum content from this community group may also be used to enhance a district's face-to-face curriculum. The first vendor to be housed inside this community group is the National Repository of Online Content (NROC). For now, the content areas that are inside this community group are Math, Science, and Social Studies. Altogether, there are thirty-four courses available for implementation. If your district is a subscriber to ANGEL, there is no cost to get this "value-added" service and you should have received some documentation outlining the steps to enroll in this community group. If you would like to see how this works, please let us know and we'd be happy to show you around the "Nebraska Community for Shared Content".

Secondly, the annual ESU Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship contest has officially kicked off. Every year, the ESU's, in partnership, with the Nebraska Attorney General's office, sponsor an Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship Poster and Public Service Announcement (PSA) contest for students in K-12 schools across Nebraska. All entries (for ESU 4 schools) must be submitted to ESU 4 by March 16, 2009. A winning entry in each category will be selected and sent on to the Attorney General's office for special recognition.

Web Site of the Month

http://www.zamzar.com

Having trouble getting Quicktime movie files to play within Windows Movie-Maker or vice versa? Zamzar is a great online resource for converting many types of files including document, image, music, and video files. There is no application to download as this is an online tool, and best of all, it is free for converting up to 100 meg files! Simply go to zamzar.com in your web browser and follow the four simple steps. You can either browse out to your computer to choose the file you want to convert or type in the Internet address of a file online. Next, select the type of file you need your file converted to. Be sure to read the “Conversion types” page on the site to make sure you know what file type your file can be converted to successfully. And, as always when working with a digital camera, camcorder, mp3 player, etc., check your hardware manual for suggested troubleshooting tips.

Any comments, suggestions, or questions can be directed to me (grobke at esu4.org) or to Kim (krobke at esu4.org).