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.

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.

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.

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