Laptop Project Review Meeting

This afternoon we had an opportunity to review the progress of our laptop project for the upper junior classes. All four classes in year 5 and 6 have 8 Toshiba laptops permanently located and at their complete disposal. After a full term (project has been running since September) of use the four members of staff (which includes me) and our head discussed the successes and frustrations so far.

The questions below are taken from the agenda for the meeting – blow them are brief notes of the responses from staff.

Can you explain / outline one lesson or activity with the laptops that was a real success?

• Science (Y5) – using a shared Google spreadsheet to input pulse data, all children focused on task and gaining a great deal from seeing the other data simultaneously being added.
• RE (Y5) – paired research using the Learning about Religion software.
• Science (Y6) – laptops were used to provide a different learning approach when exploring the features of plants. Laptops setup on a table with web based activity, other tables with practical and adult led activities. Children moved around the activities throughout the afternoon.
• Maths (Y6) – successful use of SMART Notebook to make a game during an assessment of measures.
• Literacy (Y6) – TV Scripts – children accessed video of news reading on laptops to help support their understanding of script writing.

Great to hear about other successful lessons and the different ways that they have been used, a good positive start to the meeting.

What are the most positive aspects of having the laptops as part of your classroom?

• Increased motivation for learning.
• “Feels like they have always been there.”
• Enhances and supports learning.
• Children’s feeling of ownership.
• Focus during learning activities, when working together or in pairs too.
• Making learning fun.
• Parental appreciation has been evident too.

We explored the second comment a bit further and decided that the older children have been able to quickly adapt to the responsibility of the hardware in their learning environment. They have a strong sense of ownership and are diligent when looking after them. Would this happen with younger year 3s or year 4s? Would there be too much emphasis on the management of hardware issues; which have become almost invisible in the classes involved with the project because of the initiative shown by the children.

What has changed about the way we are thinking about planning / teaching / learning?

• Enhances learning – particularly for boys, make the most of this.
• Planning and teaching has continued in a similar fashion.
• TB explained that a shift in thinking may be necessary in order to get the most value from the resource.
• Laptop resource presents new opportunities to differentiate for a task – Good IT skills with Good literacy skills type groupings.

It will be interesting to explore in more detail the differences in learning that takes place – even if planning and teaching remain similar (with a few tweaks) has the point of learning broadened and does it now encompass other opportunities?

If there have been frustrations, what has been the biggest or most common?

• Procedures to save – issues about network paths to server.
• Differences in versions of MS Word and compatibility with other classroom computers.
• Battery life when using Kar2ouche.

I was a little disappointed to hear that we had battery life issues already. However I think that the processor intensive use of Kar2ouche a cached, over the network, multimedia software title asks a lot of processor and in turn eats battery life for breakfast. Not to mention this is all over a wireless network, I am just pleased Kar2ouche is working at all! I can remember thinking would it work over just such a network a long time ago. We talked about actively managing battery life and encouraging the children to take account of it too.

How has it impacted on the children’s experience of school?

• Very positively!
• Ask the children – online survey
• Use of del.icio.us account has been extremely well received by children who have gone home and continued work on a web link used in class. Lots of examples of this in all four classes.

The use of del.icio.us has been a great success so far and allows us to easily share web links, but also to explore the social bookmarking inherent in this tool. With over 100 links saved by the teachers at school the resource can only grow and get better. This, as a colleague mentioned, will require us to be a little more sophisticated when tagging resources so searching for them is easier.

I am already looking forward to seeing what the children make of the laptops overall – I will need to explore some online (or other) method for doing a survey for 120+ students.

What would you like more support or training for?

• Using Excel spreadsheets.
• Diigo for use in literacy – a colleague had read my blog post about it in y5.
• Tips and shortcuts that make life easier.
• Using audio – sound recording equipment etc.

I hope to be purchasing some audio recording equipment for school soon and will be looking into the best ways to incorporate this capability in the curriculum.

What are the next steps for this project?

• Desire for more machines from all colleagues.
• 1 between 2 would be ideal.

We have all had a very positive experience so far with the project and I am pleased that the staff feel confident to take on board a greater number of machines in their classrooms, let’s hope the momentum continues throughout the new year. To help us develop as a staff we also discussed the possibilities of learning from other schools who have a similar resource. I explained about Graham Wegner in Australia having something parallel to us and how it would be valuable to hear from the staff involved. A visit to a another UK school would really help us get some perspective on the approach we are taking.

Please get in touch if you have a 1:1 laptop project (whatever stage it is at – we are still in the foothills so to speak) running in your school and are willing to explain your responses to some of the questions above.