Much of my time is spent work­ing with edu­ca­tors who are part of a one to one ini­tia­tive, or those who are excited to be mov­ing in that direc­tion.  Once in a while I also visit with oth­ers who unfor­tu­nately don’t see much value in one to one.  In my con­ver­sa­tions edu­ca­tors also tell me sto­ries about how other edu­ca­tors or com­mu­nity mem­bers see one to one as a ter­ri­ble thing.  Many of us have heard of all of the rea­sons that one to one “can’t work”. 

I have col­lected some rea­sons peo­ple have implied that one to one can’t work, and pre­sented those con­cerns to indi­vid­u­als cur­rently involved with one to one.  In my next series of posts I will pro­vide you with the responses from the issues I have pre­sented.  Feel free to com­ment and respond to the con­cerns listed.  Hope­fully, our responses can help those who are con­sid­er­ing one to one deal with those neg­a­tive constituents.

Here is my ini­tial list of the rea­sons many say one to one can’t work.

One to one is just too expensive!

There is no research that sup­ports one to one.

If stu­dents have com­put­ers, they will con­stantly be off task.

We can’t give the com­put­ers to kids–they will break them!

What hap­pens if
kids get on inap­pro­pri­ate sites while they are at home with the school
computers?

Par­ents will not allow us to let stu­dents access the internet.

Stay tuned for the remain­der of the series.…..

The Any­time Any­where Learn­ing Foun­da­tion, AALF, is cel­e­brat­ing 20 years of one to one this month.  Not only is that an excit­ing accom­plish­ment, but it also speaks to the stay­ing power of one to one.  Today, many edu­ca­tors see one to one as another gim­mick in edu­ca­tion that will soon dis­ap­pear.  With proper imple­men­ta­tion of one to one, that will not happen! 

Take a look at AALF’s site if you get a chance.  There are lots of resources that may be help­ful for you if you are a one to one, or if you are con­sid­er­ing the move to one to one.  This is one of those sites that you must book­mark or put on your reader!

While I was in Mum­bai, India, I was able to meet AALF pres­i­dent Bruce Dixon and attend one of his work­shops.  You can see my notes from his ses­sion that day.  Bruce brings lots of expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge to the table from his many years of work­ing with one to one schools.

I fre­quently have con­ver­sa­tions with edu­ca­tors about trans­form­ing schools.  Our con­ver­sa­tions often focus on how many of the things that are cur­rently taught at schools aren’t very rel­e­vant.  So what should today’s stu­dents learn?

As schools move to one to one, it presents a great oppor­tu­nity for schools to address this ques­tion.  I’m curi­ous to hear your feed­back about what things you think stu­dents should be learn­ing.  Hope­fully, many of you can find a cou­ple of min­utes to con­tribute to this con­ver­sa­tion.  I’ve included some ques­tions that might get you thinking.

Is it impor­tant for stu­dents to mem­o­rize things that they can find on an inter­net search in 5 seconds?

Do stu­dents need to know how to use cur­sive handwriting?  

How much time should be spent mem­o­riz­ing math facts? 

How much time should be devoted to teach­ing spelling?  

How much time should be spent with fac­tual recall?

Where on Bloom’s Tax­on­omy should most learn­ing take place?

Nick Sauers

I sim­ply couldn’t resist respond­ing to a post about how var­i­ous law schools were ban­ning lap­tops. You may want to read the orig­i­nal post before read­ing my rampage.

This is absolutely ridicu­lous, but it doesn’t sur­prise me one bit!  Higher edu­ca­tion is full of extremely intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als who have lit­tle or no train­ing in effec­tive instruc­tion.  A while back I wrote a post titled Ban Bore­dom not Lap­tops on just this topic.  If you don’t want to take the time to read the post, I have briefly sum­ma­rized it.

Stu­dents get dis­tracted and become off task when they are not engaged in class.  Trust me, stu­dents don’t need a lap­top to be off-task.  If instruc­tion is poor, stu­dents may doo­dle or sim­ply float off to a nice com­fort­able place in their own minds.  Tak­ing away their lap­tops won’t change that.  The only thing that can get stu­dents more engaged is to pro­vide bet­ter instruc­tion.  I was a class­room teacher and then prin­ci­pal respon­si­ble for eval­u­at­ing teach­ers.  Much of my train­ing for those posi­tions focused on iden­ti­fy­ing effec­tive instruc­tional prac­tices.  Unfor­tu­nately, many pro­fes­sors have very lit­tle train­ing about instruc­tional prac­tices.  I worry that there are also some who don’t care about effec­tive instruc­tional prac­tices.  The K-12 edu­ca­tion sys­tem does need chang­ing also, and hope­fully I am part of that reform move­ment.  With that being said, K-12 edu­ca­tors do rou­tinely par­tic­i­pate in pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment and focus on improv­ing teach­ing and learn­ing.  Can the same thing be said for most professors?

  Cur­rently, I am at a higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tion.  When I walk around cam­pus, I am dis­turbed by much of the instruc­tion tak­ing place.  I talk with stu­dents who are eager to share their sto­ries about the lack in the qual­ity of their instruc­tion.  These expe­ri­ences are not unique to my uni­ver­sity.  The grad­u­a­tion rates for four year insti­tu­tions may be one indi­ca­tor of how poor instruc­tion is.  One of the biggest dif­fer­ences that I see between K-12 and higher ed. is a sim­ple phi­los­o­phy.  Most K-12 edu­ca­tors seem to agree that learn­ing is the goal of edu­ca­tion.  There­fore, teach­ing needs to be altered to ensure learn­ing takes place.  Higher ed. instruc­tors seems to think that if teach­ing has taken place, the stu­dents are solely respon­si­ble for their learn­ing.  The qual­ity or lack of qual­ity of instruc­tion is not the con­cern of the instructor. 

Burn­ing lap­tops, smash­ing them with a ham­mer, or ban­ning them alto­gether seem like pretty fool­ish solu­tions.  If the lap­tops remain a con­cern, would it be pos­si­ble to ask stu­dents to close them dur­ing a cer­tain part of class? (This may be sim­ple, but I was an ele­men­tary teacher.)  Would it also be pos­si­ble to have dis­cus­sions about appro­pri­ate use of lap­tops?  If stu­dents don’t respond to this, I would be a lit­tle sur­prised by the lack of matu­rity of your law students. 

I know that I for one don’t want to ever be rep­re­sented by a lawyer who was banned from using a lap­top in law school because some­one felt s/he might be too dis­tracted.  Their edu­ca­tion would be some­what lim­ited if they were not allowed to use a tool that could very likely be one of the most pow­er­ful tools they use every day of their career.  The lap­top is not the issue in these classes.…..it is the qual­ity of instruction.

I have received some addi­tional resources to add to my pre­vi­ous posts and notes from ASB Unplugged.  Those resources include Scott Klososky’s pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion and the TED x ASB videos.  There are some short descrip­tions on the TED site about each of the pre­sen­ta­tions.  They do have rel­e­vance for one to one edu­ca­tors. Hope­fully these resources that I have pro­vided will be help­ful for those of you who were unable to attend ASB Unplugged.

I have also included a link to a cou­ple of flickr photo gal­leries if you would like to see pic­tures from the event, or the jour­ney to India.  This pic­ture was taken from the third floor at ASB.