Recently, the Learning Matters blog posted a 9-minute piece that they filmed about a school district in Mooresville, North Carolina that went "completely digital." All of the students and teachers from grades 4 - 12 have laptops (over 5,000). This project began 3 years ago and the teachers are describing big differences in their teaching and the students' learning.
Is this any different then other 1-to-1 experiences? Is it really about the computers? What changes do you see in the pedagogy of the school? It is difficult to answer these questions in 9 minutes, but what do you think?
Watch the video and see what you think? They have had reductions in school problems. They have an active filtering system on the information accessible. They blog YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace.
What do you think?
Z
I'd say there were certainly changes to the way teachers taught and organized their day, but I'm left wondering how much of a shift from a teacher-centered instruction to student-centered instruction really took place. I'm sure there are varying degrees within the school and 9 minutes isn't very much to make a decision from. Having said that, there was evidence of students working in groups, teachers taking the lead role in the classroom, which isn't a bad thing either, as well as content filtering, which is a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteIn the end I think it's less about the tool and more about the underlying pedagogy. Do the teachers know what they want to achieve and how the tools available to them can get them there? How do school administrators expand the reach of the laptop to other technologies, like social media, while still maintaining some basic protections, policies, etc.? I think these kinds of questions are the same facing all schools that adopt a 1:1 initiative with the goal being increased student learning.