Thoughts on a 1:1 Learning Environment

I was lucky enough to attend an event hosted by Scott McLeod, director of the Center of the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), on December 11, 2009 in Ames, Iowa. Scott brought in Will Richardson, “Learner in Chief” at Connective Learning and the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms now in its 2nd Edition, published by Corwin Press. Will definitely left an impression on the 40 guests composed of superintendents, principals, Department of Education, AEA, and business and industry. Thanks to my good friend Jeff Dicks from Newell-Fonda for this opening paragraph, couldn't say it any better myself!

The Okoboji Schools is close to becoming a 1:1 school, meaning that there is one computer for every student. There are many examples of 1:1 schools that have been tremendously successful. Some of schools within our state that practice this method include Clay Central Everly High School, Newell-Fonda High School, Van Meter High School and South Hamilton High School. This has been a vision of mine for the past five years.

One of the many things I picked up from listening to Will was that a true 1:1 initiative contains more than just the computer in the hands of students. According to Clay Shirky, Internet access should be like oxygen, ubiquitous, everywhere, and silent. While many students from Okoboji have might have some sort of Internet access at home, is that bandwidth strong enough to do everything that a student would need it to do? Does it make a difference which platform the students have (PC or Mac)? Besides the computer, the school must understand that instructional strategies (how the teacher teaches) and the curriculum (what the teacher teaches) must be different than it was prior to the 1:1 deployment.

I would prefer that Okoboji's 1:1 be a comprehensive program, one where the students can take the computers home with them at night, personalize it, take good care of it and learn a great deal from it. Let's just say, I haven't convinced everyone yet that this is the way to go. Look, kids are going to make mistakes but it's up to us as the adults in their lives, to show them the correct way to do things. I believe the kids will be better off if we show them the correct way as opposed to simply saying “No, you can't do that” and try to catch them being bad. Every superintendent I've talked to about the 1:1 says the same thing, that the kids take better care of the computers than they ever thought they would. There is something to be said about “buy-in.”

Our building principals are all on board with the addition of technology into our schools and they also know that instruction and curriculum that enhances the technology must be in place before we can truly transform education in Okoboji. We are on the cutting edge and we must continue to track forward.