Unfortunately my laptop battery went flat in the middle of a session yesterday, so I lost my notes on the tablet PC session “How my tablet changed my life”. Here are some brief, probably rather cryptic notes on this mornings general session - a discussion between two experienced laptop educators and administrators. It was a dynamic discussions, and perhaps didn’t really lend itself to notetaking - it was a conversation, not a presentation. But here are a few lines I wrote down……

Tuesday morning keynote

Discussion on Research, evaluation & 1:1

Ron & Karen

Karen: you done-have a laptop program-you have a power full learning program deed to accept this to move forward. Students need teachers who are also inspired learners.

Education needs to be linked to research.

Ron: anyone saying laptop program is not relevant or applicable to their classroom is out of touch. Lots arguments as to why we shouldn’t do this. His School implementing 12 million $ project –laptops for 5600 students. No funding, no research, yet 21 council voted unanimously and they found the finds. Nothing is impossible.

Discussion:
For success, we need a leader-with vision & the will to stay the course.

“It’s a risk” Wry? Worse case scenario is that we will have students & teachers who are. Way ahead of their peers in use of technology.

Need to look for leaders amongst the teachers. Push them forward, Support them & facilitate them talking to other staff.

Education program must be teaching kids to read, write. Speak, listen & think – and the foundation for a sophisticated program that does all this is the Laptop.

The laptops cant produce change by themselves, It is how we use them that is of fundamental importance.
Research is valuable but make sure you find out their goals before participation. Make sure it is going to present unbiased information & that if will be useful information. E.g. research that said laptop use had no impact on literacy results. Closer investigation showed the laptop use was very basic - a lack of depth in the integration is what was discovered. Valuable & necessary information, although not favorable to the project.

Why do we have conferences on ‘technology in education’? do we have conferences on textbooks? Whiteboards? Until we stop thinking about it as a separate thing, we cannot move forward.

14 yr old –why does he like laptop? “Because the teacher marks me on how I think not how I write”.