May 13 2007
Laptop project update
Back in December I posted about my thoughts on investing in a pool of laptops for classes at school. Well it has been nearly 5 months since those initial thoughts and since then I have managed to pin down the make and series of machine we want and I have a much clearer understanding for the sort of resource we want.
The most important thing for me is the variables that may affect their performance in the classroom and I want to pre-empt these so that the classteachers and children can confidently turn to the technology when they want. The 16 SMARTBoards we have were installed after many weeks of intense research and price hunting. It has been much harder to find the right hardware with this laptop project, for a start. There are so many machines to choose from.
The problems that I envisage (from experience and advice):
- Battery life - can they be used successfully throughout the working school day? Do we need spare batteries?
- Wireless strength - we have an old building that is not particularly conducive to wi-fi.
- Ongoing maintenance - how will problems be dealt with when we only have a part time technician?
Our SMARTBoard project had far fewer variables than this one and so far there has not been a single problem with the SMARTBoards, in what will be 4 years of use this coming December. I want that sort of reliability from the laptops. Inevitably there will be problems, and I am not daft enough to think it will be all plain sailing - I just want to solve them, or at least anticipate them before they happen. Hopefully my considered choices now will help smooth the user experience when and if we finally purchase some.
I say “if” because I was brought back into reality after reading Stephen Hall’s post ‘Laptops are a Costly Mistake for Schools’. It was such a contrasting view on laptop projects and I am curious as to the reasons that such schemes have been considered a failure. I believe that at my school our approach is slightly different in the sense that the children will have limited access within school hours, they will not be taking the machines home. We are looking into this technology as it is part of our ICT vision not to directly address standards - as I have stated previously:
We would like our children to have a uninhibitied personal choice when to use technology; whether that be a calculator or sharing an online spreadsheet on a laptop.
I just sometimes think looking at standards or levels or grades or percentages is the wrong thing when deciding whether the project has had an impact. They did it here in the UK with interactive whiteboards. The impact is so much wider.
Not many tests are taken on laptops are they?
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The key component of a successful laptop program implementation will be the (a href = “http://dharter.edublogs.org/2007/05/10/my-turn/”>support you offer your teachers. They need to know how to teach, class manage, and plan for their students on laptops. When to use them, when not to. When to have students lower their screens, and when to have them working two to a machine.
Sometimes these skills seem obvious to those in Ed. Tech. They are not obvious to all teachers. Maintenance will be a factor, but only if laptop classroom management is not handled well. If you are not sending them home with the kids (we are the same at my school), then you have the opportunity to ensure that they are treated well, but teachers HAVE to take this responsibility.
As for wireless…you are going to need it to work reliably before you can really implement. Otherwise, it’s just frustration, and that will lead to failure.
Battery life was/is a factor for us, but now we deal directly with the manufacturer of our laptops and they build special batteries for us with longer life than typical. Look into this option…
Thanks for your comment on my post Tom. It is nice to know that they are like-minded educators out there. It is reassuring as I develop my own vision of education as I Think Aloud (Allowed) on the blog. It is commenters and readers who make it the powerful medium that it is.
Best of luck with implementation. I will be reading through your blog for Smart Board tips and suggestions.
(also my apologies on the link in my last comment…rushed the parentheses instead of the
[...] One of the big criticisms about interactive whiteboards is that it looks too much like a traditional classroom tool and that if we are serious about making education relevant to today’s world, then digital reincarnations of yesterday’s tools aren’t going to cut it. Interestingly, the other alternative according to some advocates is 1:1 laptop computing which gets the technology into the hands of the student. Some recent reports out of the US are now reporting that concept hasn’t always paid off in the manner predicted and some critics are labelling 1:1 laptop initiatives a failure. So what does work? Like my UK colleague, Tom Barrett, I’m in charge of a school initiative to get a small scale wireless laptop program up and running. Like Tom, we’re not looking at every student with a laptop that travels between home and school but rather a flexible computing solution that doesn’t require a timetabled lab or computers tied to limited access points. In short, the goal is for kids to have the computing power come to them, at their desk, clustered in workgroups around the room without the constraint of cables and the time and momentum loss of shifting to a dedicated computing room. The laptop is not the focus of the classroom but a tool to be used when applicable. Same goes for our interactive whiteboards. [...]