Like many of you, there have been times that I have heard some­one say some­thing that has really left me frus­trated, angry, or absolutely bewil­dered.  Over the past three years, I’ve also heard those same types of state­ments in ref­er­ence to one-to-one schools. My list of things that make me scratch my head are listed below in no par­tic­u­lar order. These quotes cer­tainly don’t nec­es­sar­ily rep­re­sent com­mon beliefs, but they do exist. My short com­men­tary is beneath each quote.

The iPad (or insert another one-to-one device) com­bats the phys­i­cal bur­den that stu­dents suf­fer from hav­ing to lug around text­books on their backs.

I actu­ally don’t dis­agree with this quote, but I still hate it! If schools are mak­ing the move to 1:1 to lit­er­ally lighten back­pack weight, it is a REALLY bad investment!

I worry that I will no longer be the cen­ter of the class if we move to 1:1.

Ugh! I can’t believe I heard this com­ment in a pub­lic meet­ing with 40 other educators. I hope, and believe, this remark came from some­one in the very small minority.

Stu­dents are going to be very dis­tracted with one-to-one.

Schools across the coun­try are cur­rently doing a very poor job engag­ing stu­dents. One-to-one by itself isn’t the solu­tion, but it sure has the poten­tial to help in numer­ous ways.

The tech­nol­ogy really doesn’t matter.

I don’t think we can ful­fill our role as schools in 2011 with­out ade­quately edu­cat­ing our stu­dents about how to use tech­nol­ogy appro­pri­ately and effec­tively. In order to do so, schools need tech­nol­ogy that stu­dents can access on a reg­u­lar basis!

Good teach­ing is good teaching.

I under­stand the think­ing behind this state­ment, and agree with it to a point. How­ever, I don’t believe tech­nol­ogy can any longer live as some­thing sep­a­rate that class­rooms can choose to ignore. I’m not argu­ing that tech­nol­ogy needs to be used every minute of every class, but ignor­ing it shouldn’t be an option either! Stu­dents WILL be expected to leave schools and know how to use tech­nol­ogy in their per­sonal and pro­fes­sional lives.

My point in post­ing this list is more than just vent­ing (although I won’t deny a bit of vent­ing). Hear­ing these state­ments rein­forces how impor­tant it is that schools com­mu­ni­cate their mes­sage. Do all of your stake­hold­ers know WHY you went one-to-one?

Are there any quotes that you could add to the list that really get under your skin?

Nick Sauers