We have been discussing the idea of going to a one-to-one laptop to student ratio at our school.\u00a0 Today we met with our admin team and clarified some of our ideas.\u00a0 We are talking about beginning the process next school year and phasing in the program over several years beginning with Grade 8 and possibly Grade 5.\u00a0 Grade 5 would be the lowest grade to participate in the program and it would, over several years, grow to include all students in grades 5-12.<\/p>\n
A key issue raised today was that of professional development.\u00a0 How to we ensure teachers are ready to have every child in their classroom equipped with a powerful learning tool \/ distraction factory?<\/p>\n
Firstly, I should back up and remind you, gentle reader, why we are even considering this idea in the first place: learning.\u00a0 Today\u2019s learners are \u201cdigital natives\u201d who are immersed in technology everyday or at the very least are growing up in a technologically saturated world.\u00a0 There are few to no jobs any student at our school will hope to have that will not involve computers and technology.\u00a0 Their own social world is already being altered by chat, texting, MySpace and the like.\u00a0 The way students live, learn and communicate today is vastly different than the way we did when we were in school.\u00a0 But our teaching has not changed to keep up.<\/p>\n
What our team is proposing is a philosophical switch from viewing technology education as a separate subject with a separate set of skills to an approach that sees 21st century skills as inseparable from the technology tools at our disposal.\u00a0 We are trying to help teachers see the subjects they are already teaching in the light of the digital world and to use those tools in their units and lessons in a more natural way.\u00a0 In order to do so easily and effectively we feel that students and teachers will need to have anytime\/anywhere access to those tools.<\/p>\n
Our first step, then, is to give teachers their own laptop.\u00a0 You can learn a whole lot more about using a tool if you have one yourself to use at work and home.\u00a0 Using a laptop to do the things you want to do for enjoyment, like FaceBook<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, email, IM, Skype<\/a>, etc. helps you get comfortable with the tool and takes away that fear factor when you come to work and have to use that tool in your teaching.<\/p>\n In conjunction with giving teachers laptops is the critical issue of professional development.\u00a0 Training, not in using the laptop specifically, but in planning relevant, effective units and lessons that incorporate the technology at your disposal.\u00a0 We have many experiences within our group and have suggested different approaches.\u00a0 One idea is to buy a curriculum and possibly have trainers come from the US from Intel or Microsoft.\u00a0 Both companies have well-developed, proven training programs for teachers in technology integration.\u00a0 Microsoft, or more precisely the Gates\u2019 Foudation sponsors the TLP (Teacher Leadership Program)<\/a> and Intel has its Teach Professional Learning Program 2007.<\/p>\n What we will do remains to be decided.\u00a0 That it is vital is certain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What if you walked in to your classroom and every child in the room had a laptop? Does that sound like a scary teacher dream to you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[46,58,73],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional-development","tag-laptop","tag-pd","tag-teacher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcglaysia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}