One-to-One

I have been looking through several of the edublogs recommended by our instructors and there is a ton of interesting information out there! Edublog is a term I had not heard until a few weeks ago. I think it is pretty incredible that so many educators are sharing ideas in such a public and world-wide forum.

When looking for a blog to comment on, I ended up on a blog titled "The Open Classroom" written by a woman named Jo McLeay. Many of her posts are very interesting and touch on topics we have discussed in class. She has a couple posts about gaming in education! The post that caught my eye was about a school she visited that was in the early stages of implementing a 1:1 program. Such programs provide computers to every student. She mentioned that she "felt that this school was on the verge of some major breakthrough with regard to the learning of students." 

In 1999, when I was in 7th grade, my school implemented such a program and all students in grades 6 through 12 were required to have laptops. This was a very early implementation of such a program and there were MANY kinks. The teachers were not adequately trained or prepared, the networks were slow, and the laptops proved to be more of a distraction. At the time, having your own computer in middle school was rare. We were excited to have this new technology at our fingertips and Napster was more exciting than homework. Bottom line: the program wasn't that effective since all of us already had computers at home.

That being said, I think such programs would be much more beneficial now. Technology has come such a long way and education computer programs have grown. I agree with Jo McLeay's enthusiasm about such programs because I believe that they will be extremely influential if implemented well. I look forward to seeing how such programs transform education.

http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/2011/12/effective-11-programs.html