1:1 Computing

[Nitin Julka]

Inspired by Dave Forman's comment on Doug Jones' wall - I am wondering which districts in Ohio serve as good examples of 1:1 computing? Which serves as a bad example? Why?

One of the best list of resources on this topic that I have found is Brasst's del.icio.us tag on 1-1.

Jim Moulton also looks like he has interesting insights in this topic.

[Nitin Julka]

Check out this interesting article on assessments, 1:1 computing, and 21st century skills.

[Michael Pennington]

I completed my student teaching at Beechwood Middle School were 1:1 computing was implemented. Garth Holman, the teacher I worked under is a great example of how 1:1 computing should be used in a school. While I was student teaching I used the 1:1 program to allow students the freedom to create information, design their own digital textbooks and podcast their thoughts.

[Suzanne Fisher]

So...what do we need to do to get this going in Chardon? Hardware, software, motivation? Or do our kids need more of a solid instructional technology background in order to do this?

[John Case]

I work for Ohio Hi-Point Career Center (www.ohiohipoint.com) and would like to think that we are a good example of a 1:1 computing program. We have begun our 4th year, and are currently handing out about 700 laptop computers on our main campus. I have written a resource guide for CDWG that can be seen here: http://www.schooltechtools.com/blog/?p=30

I know of several other schools, but would not say that any one of them are a bad example. I think it would be really hard to say that ANY school is a bad example. We all just do things differently depending on our unique environment.

I'd be willing to speak to anyone about our 1:1 program, please just contact me.

[Abby Kelton]

Hi John,

I'd love to hear more about your 1:1 program. Now that you're four years in, what kind of impact have you seen on student motivation and achievement? How are the laptops being used in instruction?

Abby

[John Case]

There are some indicators that you can put numbers on, and some that you cannot. For example, we have seen an increase in student attendance (I don't know the exact numbers). We have also seen student enthusiasm increase as well, but we can't put a number on that.

Unfortunately we had quite a few changes in the same year as the 1:1 laptop program started. All of these changes make it very difficult to track exactly what/who was responsible for increasing the indicators. We had a relatively new Superintendent, a new HS Director, MANY new HS teachers, implemented a new SIS, and a new electronic grade book(Progress Book). Every one of these factors deserves some credit for the increases, but it's hard to say that the laptop program is responsible for all of it. One thing that we can give the laptop most of the credit for, at least initially but not now, was an increase in our enrollment. We had been around 400 students in the Career Center, and we are now close to 700 students. The first year of the laptop program, our enrollment increased by about 50 students. The same goes for the second year. Over the last 2 years we have had a real push for recruiting (since we are a Career Center we have to recruit students - unlike many others on this site), and it has really paid off. As I said earlier, we are now at nearly 700 students, which is our building capacity.

We have noticed the technology proficiency level of our teachers has increased quite a bit. We used SAM 2003 from Thomson Learning to establish a baseline for each staff member. SAM then prescribed technology based training to the teachers depending on where their skill set was lacking. The staff has really enjoyed using SAM because they could do it at their convenience and didn't have to try to make it to a before-school am training session. We are anxiously waiting on the new version of SAM to come out since it will cover Vista training and Office 2007. It has been delayed several times, but should be worth it when it arrives.

As for the laptops being used in instruction, there are many different ways they are being used, it just depends on the classroom. Here are some examples:

1. Research - obvious but many students don't know how to research
2. Writing - many teachers have used blogs or wikis
3. Class presentations - death by PowerPoint, Movie Maker, PhotoStory
4. Communication - students and teachers are now more connected than ever before
5. Lab specific software - AutoCAD, Electronics software, automotive software, etc.
6. Ebooks - hard to get, but publishers are getting easier to work with
7. ANGEL Learning - we replaced Moodle with ANGEL Learning and many of the classes have an online supplement

There are others, but it's the weekend and I just woke up and haven't finished my first cup of coffee.

[Abby Kelton]

Thanks for the detailed response! Your school obviously has a lot of valuable experience that other districts can learn from. A couple more questions...

- I'm not familiar with SAM from Thompson Learning. How does it compare with Atomic Learning?

- Why did Moodle need to be replaced? We recently selected edu2.0 for the online component of a professional development program; we chose it over Moodle because it was more user-friendly, and because when it expands when teachers develop online supplements to their course we won't need to buy our own server to host it. I'm always curious though to know what else is out there. How did you decide to switch to ANGEL?

Have you seen Wikibooks as a source of online textbooks? I think it's neat that students can contribute too as they learn about a topic.

[John Case]

The big difference between SAM and Atomic Learning is the assessment piece. SAM can administer the student an exam and prescribe training lessons based on their performance. Atomic Learning has a much larger library of content than SAM.

We decided to replace Moodle with ANGEL Learning because we felt that we had outgrown Moodle. Many of our teachers found that Moodle was not user-friendly, and they felt the students had a hard time with it. We had a database error that was preventing us from upgrading Moodle to the latest version, and decided to pursue other options. We decided on ANGEL based on recommendations from Clark State Community College, and other references they provided. We looked at Blackboard, but it was just WAAAAYYYYYY to expensive. I think it was going to cost us over $30,000 for the first year and didn't provide us as many features as ANGEL could provide. I also liked the fact that it has a very large user base and is commercially supported. Their tech support typically answers our questions within 4 hours for a low-priority ticket, and faster for high priority tickets.

As for Wikibooks, I haven't seen that site yet. I'll take a look this weekend (as it's giving us some much needed rain). I have encouraged some of our teachers to look at (and contribute) to Curriki

[Abby Kelton]

Curriki's a great one. I'll look into ANGEL - thanks!

[Nitin Julka]

I definitely just accidentally deleted John Case's reply.

I looked up the cached version of this page and here it is:

"You can check out our case study here:
http://www.angellearning.com/community/documents/Ohio_Hi-Point_Case..."

[Chad]

Hi John! Thanks for sharing some details of your 1:1 efforts. I wanted to let you know (and everyone) that your interview turned out great. I just reviewed a roughcut of the podcast. I don't know when we'll have it on Ohio on iTunes U, but I'll be sure to post here when I know more.

[Nitin Julka]

John,

My question is this:

When is the right time for a school to start a 1:1 program?
Should we wait until the infrastructure is stabilized?
Should we wait until the teachers are up to speed?
Should we start with 1:1 with the teachers first?
Should we start with a pilot right away to gain the biggest, most immediate impact?

Thanks!

-Nitin