Hey! Glad to see you back! Don't forget to show some love and comment.
Tonight on the way home, as I sat in traffic and reflected on the day, I had a simple yet profound epiphany about students and 1:1 computing.
Before I share it with you, let me give a little background. My current school is a 1:1 Macbook environment. All of the students have their own computers they carry from class to class. Last year this school site had the same computers, but in a COW (laptop cart) format. Teachers would check out carts each day they needed computers. Nearly every day all of the carts were checked out and many teachers used laptops with their students on a regular basis. For the past three years I’ve had a similar situation at my previous school. In my classroom nearly every day students used computers to blog, podcast, and complete long-term projects, assignments, or Moodle activities (quizzes, discussion forums, etc.).
As my current school site has switched to a 1:1 format, we’ve noticed a rash of discipline problems related to the laptops. We had to close Moodle messaging because we found it was too much of a distraction and a small handful of students were using it to threaten other kids or send profane messages. Some students regularly managed to find an unblocked gaming or social networking site and would choose to play there rather than complete an assignment. This became so troublesome that last week all student accounts were dropped into a “maximum security” group on the server, allowing them to access only a handful of sites. Many teachers (including me) have also found that students are down right angry when we ask them to close their computers and complete more traditional assignments, such as taking notes or reading the textbook (even if it is for a computer project). For example, this week we spent two days creating atomic models for the first 10 elements on the periodic table using M&M’s Every other year I’ve taught this lab has been a hit with my students and really helps to solidify key the concepts of atomic number and average atomic mass. This year, however, the kids were irate because I asked them to put their computers away for the lab. The entire time I battled with them to pay attention and not touch their laptops, which normally sit off to the side on their tables plugged in and charging. At one point, a group of students had to put their computers in the laptop cart kept in my room because they would open them up every time I turned around for two seconds. Today at an afternoon staff meeting focused on discipline, I found that nearly every single teacher on campus is having the exact same problem! Some have become so frustrated that students must check their computers in the laptop cart on their way in the door and they can’t have them back until the end of the period. These same teachers previously had students use laptops during certain parts of the period to create blog posts or participate in online discussion forums, but found the students couldn’t transition from computer-based learning to traditional activities or class discussions. When students had to close their computers they became angry and refused to work.
As I drove home and digested what I heard in the meeting and thought about what is happening in my classroom I kept asking myself these questions – Why wasn’t this a problem last year with a COW format? What’s the dramatic change? What makes the kids so angry about closing their laptops? Then it dawned on me…
With a COW format teachers give students computers the days they use are using them in class. With a 1:1 program teachers effectively take away computers they days they aren’t using them. In either situation students react accordingly.
This difference is subtle and I am not even sure it will make much sense to everyone. However the the more I think about it, I realize its a profound difference affecting my classroom and my student’s ability to learn from different instructional formats. So here’s my question Where do we go from here? Any ideas?
Joe
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Related posts:
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Joe…
I think what you’re experiencing is normal. This is new for students (1 to 1) in the classroom. You are dropping students into a situation they have no previous experience with.. In an environment that is challenging without computers, providing students with access to a tool that connects them to the/their world, in ways they have never had, is bound to cause a little distraction.
I think in time this will improve, but it will take longer than a semester
. I think the important thing is not to go too ballistic, and drop back to draconian measures.
When students are using these tools from the time they start school, in meaningful learning experiences, the issues that you see now in middle school won’t be issues. But we have a ways to go before we get to that point…and it’s a bit out of your control.
As teachers, the majority of us are optimistic and idealists. We see are students through the lens of our experience. Our expectations are high, which they should be, but we need to be prepared to accept that they may see things differently, and these tools and learning strategies are completely foreign to them in a traditional learning environment. There will be speed bumps along the way. They may slow us down, but they should not make us stop completely. …this is tough when we are measuring students against defined learning standards and sharing their results in the newspaper.
As we all know there is more to education than the standards and multiple choice questions. To a 13 year old twelve years is an eternity, but in the big scheme of things (life), it’s a mere foot note. We’re preparing kids for life.
Okay, getting off my soap box
Thanks for the comment on misterteacher.com.
Very insightful post. It seems to me that the kids do not see the laptops as a learning tool but as a toy that they are forced to do schoolwork on. As soon as they learn that their laptops are not for playing on, but for learning on, things will get better.
I think the teachers in your school who have the kids put the laptops aside as they enter the room are on to something. This sends the message that they are not the sole source of learning in the classroom; that they will be used WHEN THEY ARE NEEDED. For instance, with your activity on atomic models I would have the laptops sitting on the side of the classroom until the kids had finished with the M & M’s. Then, the laptops could be used for a follow-up activity: a blog entry, a search for additional information on the Internet, etc.
With time, teachers will innovate and share and things will get better.
This last trimester I conned my school’s tech support out of 10 laptops. I discovered some of the same attitude problems when we had them out all of the time. This trimester I put some definite restrictions on when they can get them out and what they can do on them. It is going better. I think John Patten is correct that the newness is part of the problem. My students clearly had/have a perception that they should be able to do what they want with the laptops. I am still battling this attitude with my sophomores, juniors and seniors. However, my freshman think this is a really great opportunity and are much more on task. They actually want homework so they can “hog” their home computers and use Google Docs.
Michigan’s new and improved curriculum requires much more writing, so they see having the laptops as real help. They are afraid that if they misuse them, we’ll lose them. (It helps that Tech support keeps threatening to come get them.) The kids know I laptop-napped them and we’ll eventually have to resort to fast-talking our way into the computer labs. Somehow a special ed English class is not a high priority for computer use. I am sure that the kids know that I am doing whatever I have to do to get them the tech tools they need.
I’ll end my rambling with my gut reaction: Having improves behavior with laptop use.
Just now coming to this post by way of reading your c&w 2009 post.
Darned smart, and the difference is not at all subtle:
>With a COW format teachers give students computers the days they >use are using them in class. With a 1:1 program teachers effectively >take away computers they days they aren’t using them. In either >situation students react accordingly.
One of my jobs is to site with our cms support group, and the norm for a meeting with them is everybody has their laptop open. They are at the meeting, but they are also emailing, dealing with cms crises, finding info related to the meeting. Everyone participates, but (except for laptopless moi) most of the time nobody looks at anyone else.
When teachers take away laptops, they disempower students. When teachers were giving them out, they were empowering.
I believe, if you have a traditional classroom set up, I would stand in the back of the classroom where you can see all the screens. I would nominate a student scribe. I would get a projector and let the students use some software to build the periodic table models.