Connected classrooms: the Clovis High Laptop Program: technology integration in the classroom remains an elusive goal at many schools. However, technology is here to stay, and we have an obligation to prepare students for their world

Leadership, March-April, 2003 by James Bushman

In 2002 the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency released a report confirming the value of using computer technologies in the classroom as an instructional tool. The report studied 2,000 students front 60 schools over three years and its conclusions are the most definitive yet to support the idea that teachers should integrate technology related materials (such as computers, media, internet, e-mail) into the classroom (www.becta.org.uk).

The study found that in classrooms where students used computer technologies frequently, students scored significantly better over time on assessments. For most educators in this country, the study's results will not come as a surprise. For the last decade public schools have been developing technology integration primarily by getting computers into the hands of students, a task not easily accomplished and fraught with problems.

The following story from one public high school illustrates what can be achieved when committed teachers, sufficient technology and willing students are put into a "wired classroom." It also underscores many issues and problems that have made meaningful technology integration in the classroom an elusive goal and one that requires constant monitoring and comprehensive planning by administrators.

There are 96 students currently enrolled in the Laptop Program at Clovis High School. The school has nearly 800 computers on its campus and teachers use them in a variety of ways, but the Laptop Program is special. Teachers have long complained that not having computers for every student limited their ability to create meaningful lessons for their students. So to get the one-to-one access between students and computers, the kind or-access the studies extol, a new Lap top Program was created.

The classes are open to freshman students who want an integrated computer experience with their academic core, standards-based classes. Students in the Laptop Program must enroll in biology, English 9 and either Algebra 1 or geometry (the standard freshman classes for most students in the district).

Students who choose the laptop option do not need typing skills or even a computer. The laptop classrooms all contain class sets of wireless laptop computers each student call use. This frees students from the burden of toting computers from room to room. Students are checked out a memory key (the size of a car key) they call plug into the computers they use in the classroom. In this way, they can take work from class to class or to their home without having to tote their own computer.

On a typical day students will do a variety of activities on the computer. When a student like Sheila enters Ms. Taylor's English class, she goes right to her seat and logs on to the teacher's web site using her own personal password. (Ms. Taylor uses www.aspire.com, a fee-based web site that call be accessed from any computer with Internet access).

Sheila reads the lesson plan for the day and notes any homework, which she copies and pastes to her memory key. The day's lesson may involve any standards-based language-arts activity for ninth grade, but any handouts a teacher might traditionally use are posted on the web site. Students might use the laptops to access analogy games, study vocabulary, read short stories, write essays, research via the Internet, or do projects. In addition to these activities, the computer also serves as a management tool.

What students say

The students like the class for a variety of reasons.

* "We call look at our grades whenever we are on the computer anywhere at aspire.com. At aspire we call also find our homework and stories, poems, and other important things we need to read or do."

* "In my English class I tend to write better on a computer because I can type faster. I don't have to worry about my handwriting, and it is easier to edit my text."

* "It teaches me how to write better: also it is just fun."

Ms. Taylor is more philosophical about what she is trying to do with her students. "Students don't think of this as a laptop class; they see it as a learning class. When they conic in they are ready to learn, and they don't have to wait for me. In this way, using computers makes students more independent."

When Sheila goes to math she will use the computer for different activities, in Algebra, Ms. Keeler usually gives her students quick notes to start (she uses a projection unit that is linked to her laptop) and then the students do an interactive PowerPoint or web site activity that corresponds to the lesson.

"The web activities I try to provide give kids a context for the math ideas I teach, and the sample problems or activities provide the immediate feedback that helps the kids to process the ideas. When we do math problems, kids will sometimes ask for help; I can usually refer them back to the web activity they did, and you can see the light go on."

Ms. Keeler puts many of her note explanations in PowerPoint presentations, which she burns on CD's in her classroom. This way, if students are absent she can just hand them a CD and let them take the lesson home. Small files are placed directly on her web site (visit the web site Alice uses with her class at www.alicekeeler.net).