Laptops

Laptops for students is not funded in the Tech Levy - sadly there are not enough resources at this point for laptops for all teachers either. The technical support issues are significant, particularly when a district provides the laptops for kids. I did research on this subject for a research paper and it was pretty mind-boggling. There are several newer reports out on districts that have supplied laptops for kids with some interesting results. 1:1 computing does not make a significant difference unless there is true integration with the curriculum and the students truly use the laptops for learning. Makes sense, I know, but one idea was that if the laptops were provided for kids that would improve student learning all by itself. The research says that's not the case. Also kids tend to do things with the laptops that interfere with and/or impact their operation for learning. :-) There are many students who have brought their own laptops to school which is great - the limitation is that they can't use them on the network as there is no assurance they are virus/cracker software/worm free.