I was a Junior in high school during the 2002-2003 school year when the one-to-one laptop project was implemented in Main. The sheer idea of receiving a laptop as a student in 2003 sent a giant shock of jealousy through my technology-obsessed psyche. Melissa Claus also mentioned the novelty and and rarity of the concept of bringing a laptop to school in 2003. Laptops were new, they were shiny, and they were expensive. When the 7th and 8th grade teachers in Maine heard they were receiving a laptop for every student, they must have been jumping and shouting for joy, right? The opportunities I am sure were endless!! Then, I looked deeper at the statistics provided in the article. 50% of the teachers used the laptops for formative assessment. 56% use the laptops to differentiate instruction. 51% of students use their laptop in language arts only 1 to 3 hours a week! Even more shocking, only 75% of the teachers used the laptops for classroom instruction (which seems high, but what on earth are the other 25% using, an overhead projector??).
I realize the world of Google Apps didn’t rule the world yet at this time (although Moodle was a driving force), so maybe the teachers didn’t have the collaborative technology available to them in 2003 as we do now. Still, excuses aside, I can’t fathom the overwhelming joy of receiving a laptop to use in school, only to discover that I would be using the laptop 1 to 3 hours a week in each of my classes. I wonder if the districts who have implemented the one-to-one ipad program have experienced similar results. After handing over millions of dollars into a 1-1 ipad program, do all of the teachers embrace this incredible opportunity, or did 25% decide to stick with pencil and paper and the handy dandy overhead projector?
Maybe it’s the concept of BYOD that makes me tick with jealousy after reading the Maine Experience. After implementing BYOD for a while in my classroom, I can’t help but to drool over the possibility that every student had their own, universal mobile device. Sure, there are a lot of awesome educational apps out there (Mobile Devices for Learning listed many great app suggestions), but how many apps are available on every platform (android, iOS, amazon, and even via the cloud on laptop internet browsers)? The answer is, not many. I have discovered there are several different comic strip creation apps, for example, available on all devices, but the key word is different. I came up with the genius idea for students to create a digital comic strip over a concept covered in class, using ANY application on the device of their choice. Yikes! The project was successful, but chaotic and time consuming to say the least. I’m wondering, if it is so difficult to get 53% of teachers to allow their students to utilize their one-to-one laptops in their classrooms 1 to 3 hours week, how on earth will we get 53% or more of teachers to utilize a classroom full of 15 different devices, even 1 to 3 hours a week? Is BYOD implementation in every classroom an impossible dream?
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