Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Keynote Address
1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work
Speaker:
Pamela Livingston, The Peck School, Morristown, NJ
Tuesday began with the second keynote address of the conference. Much of her presentation derived from the book she just finished and is (or will soon be) published by ISTE.
Her main points were:
- laptop programs do exist out there that are successful
- laptops promote self-directed learning and support constructivist instruction
- laptops help students stay organized.
All these things can contribute mightily to learning, especially in 7th grade and beyond, according to her research.
She went on to list a number of observations about 1-to-1 laptop programs that applied to teachers:
- increased planning, teaching, and communication
- access to a wealth of curricular resources
- increased communication with students, colleagues, and parents
Some observations for schools with 1-to-1 laptop programs:
- student attendance and enrollment can be improved
- student achievement can be improved
- home-to-school communication can be improved
Pamela seemed quite taken by the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project and showed a picture of the $100 laptop, had us use a pipe-cleaner to form an imaginary crank. We weren’t sure why, but we turned this “crank” for 30 seconds. Her point? In those 30 seconds of cranking, a person with the OLPC computer would have a number of minutes of computer use time since the OLPC Project computers have a built-in hand-crank generator. These portable computer can truly be used anywhere; lack of AC or battery power won’t be a hindrance. It gives a new spin on “anywhere, anytime” computing. The OLPC program apparently has the goal of distributing 150 million of these $100 laptops worldwide.
Here are the components Pamela listed of successful 1-to-1 laptop programs:
- planning
- steering body or committee
- multiple constituencies
- learning from what other schools/districts/states have done
- professional development
- logistics – networks, firewall, anti-virus measures, spam, spyware, etc.
- just-in-time tech support
- attention to teaching approaches that evolve to take advantage of the laptop in the classroom and with the student at home
- effective classroom management
(she suggested videos on this subject from the Irving School District in Texas)
Some successful programs she cited from her research (I don’t think she did much research in the western portion of the US):
- State of Maine
- State of Michigan
- Forney ISD (Texas)
- The Peck School (where Pamela works)
- St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School (Tampa, FL)
- Henrico County Public Schools (Richmond, VA)
Pamela also made special mention of an examination of adult learning espoused by Malcolm Knowles. The term he coined is “andragogy”. Background on Mr. Knowles and his theories about adult learning can be found at the following site:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-knowl.htm
Session 1
Tables, Tablets, and Technology – The Rocky Hill Model
Presenters:
Stephen Farley, Head of Upper School, The Rocky Hill School
Scott Young, Science Department Chair/Physics, The Rocky Hill School
Mr. Farley began by emphasizing what he feels schools should promote:
- a culture of thinking
- a culture of authentic participation
- a culture of reflection
The Rocky Hill Model, which extends from the design of the building to the way classrooms are run to the way administrators make decisions for the institution:
- transparency
- communication
- accountability
(some examples: the building is filled with light and rooms are separated by walls of glass which keeps that feeling of transparency and contant reminders of an environment of learning)
He also emphasized the importance his school attaches to being
- partners with our students
- willing to be patient, to fail, and to evolve
- welcoming to innovation, to invest in the “humanware”, and to celebrate faculty accomplishments
Scott took over and showed some examples, illustrated by pictures from the classroom, or the use of tablets and the Harkness table. Students and teacher all face each other at the table, an installed projector and screen (wirelessly accessed and available to all students), and the transparency, communication, and accountability are built into this format. The whole class is gathered face-to-face (no hiding in the last row), the layout strongly encourages discussion among all, and the ability to display student work for all to see reinforces the accountability.
He also displayed examples of student and teacher note-taking using the tablet and made the case that the teachers liked the ability to be able to hand-write comments/corrections on student papers and return to kids, and that kids liked the ability to take notes by hand. He did point out, though, that there are a number of kids who use their tablet in the “notebook” mode (clamshell opening style) rather than the flat tablet mode because many feel they can type faster (or at least far more legibly) than they can write.
There were a number of presentations at this year’s Institute that featured discussion about the use of tablets in the classroom. There was enough “buzz” about tablets this year that I’ve begun to wonder if we should take a harder look at what tablets might offer in our setting, as well.
Session 2
Paper to Electronic Delivery
Presenters:
Rachel Holsinger – US Science Teacher – Sayre School, Lexington Kentucky
Debbie Wheeler – US Science Teacher – Sayre School, Lexington Kentucky
Website for presentation materials:
http://sparta.sayreschool.org/faculty/rholsinger/
The presentation PowerPoint plus some of the documents used in the demo are available at that link.
Rather than retype everything, I will link the presentation here in the online version of my Lausanne Log.
What I will say is that these two gave one of the more effective presentations of the conference. Why? 1) the information they shared was valuable; 2) their delivery was positive, energetic, and responsive to the audience, and 3) their materials were attractively and effectively designed.
This session was an example of a session where the focus was clear and effective. I believe Rachel and Debbie attended last year’s Institute, took home some ideas and tried them. They found that they had to tweak things to make them work in their school. Their presentation, then, seemed very practical and quite a bit less theoretical than a fair number of sessions I’ve attended over the years. By showing their “problems” they encountered in fulfilling their goal to become as “paperless” as possible in the classroom, their solutions taught us methods that will work for us, too.
Besides, as I said, Rachel and Debbie were both tremendously effective as presenters. This was a winner!
Session 3
Moodle, The Free Open-Source CMS
Presenter:
Peter Richardson, Director of Technology Serives, Rutgers Prep School,
Peter pointed out that Moodle is a Content Management System (CMS) and that it is an open-source program supported by many worldwide. It came about through the work of people deeply interested in social constructivist pedagogy.
Mr. Richardson shared his PowerPoint with me so I have that for reference.. He put great emphasis on the ease of setting up Moodle, especially with the help of a download from a group (in Germany) called apachefriends.org (www.apachefriends.org). By downloading one of their files (I believe he said the package is called XAMPP), the php, MySQL, and other component requirements will get installed automatically. Sounds kind of too good to be true but I’m going to look into it more when I get back.
Unfortunately, since some sessions in different strands overlap in the schedule, I had to leave early from this Moodle presentation in order to get to…..
Session 4
Using Wink to Create Custom Tutorials
Presenter:
Melissa Wert – Harpeth Hall School mwert@harpethhall.org
We had gotten an e-mail just before the conference to download the current version of Wink, if possible, so we could go through the steps of creating a tutorial during this workshop. I was ready to go.
Melissa walked us through the steps of creating a tutorial for a simple set of operations in Paint. After thinking about the potential for something like Wink, one of the reasons I really wanted to attend this presentation was to see if there was any potential for Wink to be used to do some kind of assignments in Laptop Prep next year. Why not ask 7th graders to create tutorials with Wink to demonstrate that they know how to run a ChkDsk, or update and run SpyBot, or set McAfee for scheduled updates and system scans? Some might even be good enough to keep in a library of tutorials for other students and/or adults.
Be all the above as it may, Melissa’s presentation showed that Wink is good at what it does although it is not quite “fall off a log” easy. It’s quite likely that the kids will have an easier time of using it than I guessing from this exposure to how Wink works. The potential is definitely there for curricular use in Prep class. There’s also the option of my creating tutorials for adult or student use quite apart from Laptop Prep, so I’m glad I attended Melissa’s session.
End of day two. It's been a pretty packed experience and very rewarding!
