If you read the pre­vi­ous posts, you received a quick overview of the find­ings from my dis­ser­ta­tion.  As a recap, some of those major find­ings were:

1. Schools that were 1:1 looked dif­fer­ent than non-1:1 schools in Iowa on     multiple characteristics.
2. Teach­ers at 1:1 schools reported that their stu­dents used tech­nol­ogy more fre­quently than their non-1:1 peers.
3. Teach­ers at 1:1 schools reported that they inte­grated tech­nol­ogy at higher lev­els than their non-1:1 peers.
4. Teach­ers at 1:1 schools reported higher com­pe­tency scores with tech­nol­ogy than their non-1:1 peers.

So with the find­ings that I do have, it gen­er­ates ques­tions about their value.  So what?  Why does this mat­ter?  My response to these ques­tions is from a lead­er­ship and pol­icy per­spec­tive.    School lead­ers should care about find­ings two through four.  IF those find­ings are things they would like to see in their schools, 1:1 may be a great ini­tia­tive for them.  How­ever, if they don’t value those char­ac­ter­is­tics, a 1:1 pro­gram may not be worth­while to them.  My belief, as you have prob­a­bly guessed, is that those things are important.

I WANT stu­dents using tech­nol­ogy more fre­quently at schools!

I WANT teach­ers inte­grat­ing more tech­nol­ogy into their teaching!

I WANT teach­ers who are more com­pe­tent with technology!

As is often the case, this research  may gen­er­ate more ques­tions than answers. Now that some of these find­ings have been iden­ti­fied, it would be extremely help­ful to get at the “why” of these results.  Are 1:1 teach­ers report­ing higher tech­nol­ogy com­pe­tency because of addi­tional train­ing or is it sim­ply access to tech­nol­ogy? A com­bi­na­tion of the two is prob­a­bly likely. This ques­tion is just one of many that I’ve gen­er­ated in my head.

Nick Sauers