Oops...I Broke My Laptop

"I don't know how that happened"

"My mother threw my backpack on the floor"

"My brother stepped on it"

" I just turned it on and it broke"

"Someone must have broken into my locker and done that"



Laptop initiatives have a way of bringing out the best and the worst in the students who are using the laptops. Computer manufacturers lead you to believe that their laptops are virtually indestructible. Images of gorillas jumping up and down on the laptop or salesmen throwing the laptop across the floor are used to promote the toughness of the machine. But put that laptop in the hands of a student to really test its durability. No matter how much training students receive in the care and maintenance of laptops, be prepared to handle a wide range of damage or hardware malfunction during the first few months of the initiative.

There are three key components that need to be in place in order to efficiently handle damaged or broken laptops. First, the help desk system needs to be in place and functioning at the beginning of the year. Students need to know the process for reporting a broken laptop. A good help desk system allows broken laptops to be entered into the system, assigned to the appropriate team member for repair and returned in a timely fashion. Help desk systems also allow the technology team to track events in the life of an individual laptop or multiple laptops in the system to analyse trends or problems that may be occuring in multiple laptops. All computers need to be inventory tagged and assigned to a single user. This tagging system will not only allow the unit to be tracked in the help desk system, but it will also help to identify lost/found computers. Second, there needs to be a way to document the damage or the hardware problem and assign a disciplinary action or charge if appropriate. Finally, there needs to be a loaner system that allows students to have access to a laptop while theirs is being repaired.

Once you have planned for how to track repair requests, you need to actually repair the equipment. If this is going to be done in house, the technicians may need to pass manufacturer tests to become certified to do warranty work. Doing warranty work has two advantages. There will be a more timely turn around on the repair. Also, the manufacturer may pay the technician to do the warranty work, helping to cover the cost of having a certified technician in the district.

In addition to hardware damage, another common problem we have are dead batteries. Many classrooms have limited access to power outlets. Students don't always remember to charge their laptops overnight or bring their power cords with them to school. Most freshmen don't think ahead and plan times to charge up their battery during the school day. One possible solution is to purchase a battery charging station. Our school has a charging station that we keep in the library. Students bring their battery to the library for charging and sign out a spare battery. Another possibility is to purchase computer carts or set up power bar stations to keep in the study hall and cafeteria where students can plug in their laptop during non class periods. Power stations the require the student to leave their laptop plugged in pose a security challenge. These stations need to be located in areas that are supervised by adults.



Bottom line, be prepared to deal with some very interesting broken laptop stories. Use each broken laptop as a teachable moment to reemphasize the correct way to handle laptops. Hold students accountable for their actions. Reward students who are taking proper care of their equipment. The more the laptops are integrated into the learning process, the more value the students will place on having their laptop and the more aware they will be of treating their laptop with care.



Guiding Questions
At what point will students be charged for damage to their laptop?
What procedure will students follow to submit laptops for repair?
Who will be responsible for assigning discipline consequences, assessing repair cost and making sure the student has a loaner laptop?
What ongoing training/reinforcement on maintenance and care will students receive during the school year?
Where will charging stations be stationed?
Who will be doing the repair work?
If repairs will be done in district, who will be responsible for ordering parts?
If the repairs will be done in district, what training/certification will the staff need to do warranty work?
How many loaner computers will be kept on hand?
How will the loaner computers be checked out?
How will student computers be tagged so that they can be easily identified?

Welcome to Our School, Here's Your Laptop

After months of planning, the time has come to hand students their new laptops. First impressions are everything and this is the best opportunity to make the best impression on the students, parents and community. Once a date has been selected for the distribution, the laptop initiative team needs to sit down together to firm up plans for the big day. Ideally, parents and students will be involved in the distribution day. This ensures that all parties receive the same information at the same time. One of the keys to a successful laptop initiative is parent support, so keeping the parents informed and involved is important.

Because our laptops were going to be given to incoming freshmen, our team made the decision to hold a matriculation ceremony at the beginning of the school year. Matriculation is a ceremony to welcome students to an educational institution. The superintendent and building principal officially welcomed each freshmen to the high school and handed them a laptop. As students walked off the auditorium stage, they were met by their parents. We had stations set up to pay the laptop insurance fee and sign the acceptable use policy. If students were unable to pay the fee or chose to not sign the policy, the laptop was recollected and held for them until the fee was paid or paperwork completed. An additional station was set up to sell jump drives and laptop bags.

Students also participated in a one hour laptop training. Basic information on using the Ubuntu operating system, proper care of the laptop and the acceptable use policy was presented to them. Because they will be using these laptops for four years, the students needed to understand the importance of taking proper care of their laptops.

The district communications director coordinated press releases, media invitations and updates to the district website to promote the matriculation ceremony and laptop distribution. The ceremony took place a few days before the official first day of school, which gave the students a chance to spend time learning about their laptop on their own before the school year officially began.

Guiding Questions: Orientation
How will the laptops be distributed to the students?
What training will the students need in order to use/maintain the laptops?
Who will do the training?
When will the training take place?

Guiding Questions: Student Costs
What will the student cost be for the laptops?
How will the district collect any fees/payments?
How will insurance be made available for the laptops?
At what point will students have to pay repair or replacement costs?
How will the cost information be communicated with parents?

Guiding Questions: Acceptable Use Policy
What modifications will need to be made to the acceptable use policy?
How will the students be notified of the acceptable use policy?
What will be the discipline plan for violations of the acceptable use policy?
What will be the plan for students who fail to sign or refuse to sign the acceptable use policy?

Guiding Questions: New Students
How will laptops be distributed to students who transfer to the district during the year?
How will new students receive the netbook orientation?
Where will extra laptops be housed?

Guiding Questions: Public Relations/Communication
What are the academic goals for the laptop initiative?
How will the district be evaluating the impact of the laptops on student learning and success?
How can the district webpage be used to communicate information about the initiative?
How can distict communications be used to share information about the intiative?
How will information about the initiative be distributed to local media?
Who will be the district contact person to address questions/inquiries about the initiative?
How will the district promote the initiative - will advertising or "advertorials" be used to build interest in the intiative?
What role will social media play in sharing information about the initiative?

Change Is Never Easy

"You will have to pry my macbook out of my cold,dead hands" is not really the response you want to get as a tech specialist implementing a new laptop program in a building. Bringing a one to one netbook program into a building and changing the teacher laptop computers all at the same time is a lot of change for a staff to adapt to. A lot of the anxiety can be prevented with good advance planning and lots of communication.

The first lesson I learned was to not trivialize a staff member's concerns or questions. It is important to meet the staff members where they are along the road to technology mastery and accepting change and guide them from there. One way to do this is to have a lot of informal conversations with the staff. These can take place in hallways, the lunchroom, the parking lot or the staff lounge. It is also a good opportunity to build a higher level of rapport and trust with the staff. Find out how they currently use the technology available to them in their classrooms. Note what units or topics they are comfortable integrating technology into. Identify the potential anxiety triggers in the transition process and identify staff members who are excited about the changes and staff members who are fearful of the changes. Follow up the conversations with a more structured survey to identify areas of strength and areas that may require professional development opportunities or additional support. Google Forms would be a great tool to do this.

The second lesson I learned was the importance of having a timeline of implementation in place and sharing it with the staff. For each segment along the timeline, I worked with the tech team in the building to try and predict possible questions, problems and concerns that the staff might encounter and brainstorm potential solutions. No timeline can be carved in stone and so the staff also needs to be kept updated when the timeline changes.

The third lesson I learned was the importance of communicating, communicating, communicating. Sometimes the only information I have had to share is that I had no new information and that has been ok. It is also ok to tell the staff you don't know an answer to a question and give them a time frame that you will get back to them with an answer. I have used my blog and emails to share current news on one to one laptop programs, articles and resources focusing on the new operating system/ software we will be using and help links for making the transfer from one platform to another. I also have tried to stay on top of the current rumors about the new program that circulate in the building. Once I hear a rumor, I make sure that I spread the correct information to the staff or address the concern immediately.

The final lesson that I have learned about helping staff work through change is that no matter how much communicating and planning you do, you can never identify all the problems that you will encounter because even the best plans have to CHANGE! It took a long time for me to reconcile with this. I wasted a lot of mental energy being frustrated and angry when things did not work out the way they were initially planned or the way I had hoped they would go. The staff picked up on my frustration and this only added to their own anxiety about the new technology. I know now to direct that mental energy towards accepting the new directions that the plan may be taking and figuring out how to continue to make it a success.

Guiding Questions For Working Through Changes in Building Technology

• Who is responsible for communicating updates about the technology program to the staff?
• How will news and information be communicated?
• What methods will be used to assess staff comfort with the new plan?
• What time/funds might be available for professional development?
• Who will conduct the professional development?
• Who will help decide on the timeline for implementation?
• Who will be responsible for supporting the staff in the transition to the new technology?
• What support resources will be available to the staff - online tutorials, help guides, articles?
• How will the staff access the support resources?

The Age of Metrics - How Technology Is Influencing Education

I recently heard an interview with a New York Times reporter about The Age of Metrics. Now, as a science teacher, my first thought was about measuring in base ten, but this is not what the Age of Metrics is all about. His premise is that as our society becomes more integrated with computer based technology, we are beginning to place a higher value on quantitative information and less value on qualitative information. His examples were based in the business world where marketing decisions are now made based on website hits and advertising click throughs. More philanthropic organizations are basing their decisions to fund research and programming on data based decisions and not intrinsic or cultural value which are difficult to measure or test.

The world of education certainly is being impacted by this shift to the Age of Metrics. Books, articles and blogs share ideas for how to gather data and use the data to make decisions in your classroom and schools. Research supports the fact that one of the keys to improving education is to analyze data to see if a program or curriculum is really doing what it supposed to do. No Child Left Behind has shown the value of standardized assessment of identified standards as a measure of the information that a student has learned. Students are identified by demographic information and test scores. Data driven decision making is the educational buzz phrase of this new century. There is certainly a role for quantitative data in education.

But where do One To One initiatives fit? Is there room in a data driven curriculum for qualitative decision making? I think there is. Laptop technology offers students a wide range of choices for expressing their thoughts and ideas creatively. Programs like Google Sketchup, Animoto, Glogster, Prezi and Flickr offer opportunities for designing visual presentations of ideas. Blogging, wikis and Google Docs allow students to collaborate on ideas and share information, building on each other's strengths and perspectives. Audacity and other online music programs allow them to create original music or utilize music to emphasize a mood or concept in their presentations. TeacherTube, iMovie, Windows Movie Maker and various open source software programs allow students to create and share documentaries, social commentaries and original short videos. Access to a wide range of information and primary source materials allow students to think more quantitatively as well - by gathering information from varying points of view, by observing how society responds to challenging situations, students can form their own ideas about the world.

It is difficult to measure creativity or the value of experiencing a new piece of music or sharing an original poem or the impact of researching information from a broad range of sources- but I feel that there is still room for qualitative experiences in the 21st Century classroom and that netbooks or laptops can be a tool to do this.

Guiding Questions for Qualitative Technology Based Lesson Development in the Age of Metrics

• What choices will the student have for representing their mastery of a topic?
• What collaborative tool might the student be able to access during this lesson?
• How can technology be used as part of the reflection process either before, during or after the lesson?
• What web-based tools might the student access to expand their creative thinking abilities in this lesson?
• What tools might the student be able to access to help them map their ideas?
• What opportunities will the student be given to research information from opposing or different points of view in order to draw their own conclusions on a topic?

Related Articles
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/us/21iht-currents.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
http://astoriedcareer.com/2009/12/what-stories-can-do-that-metri.html
http://blog.ubervu.com/

Help...

Help...
A good portion of my weekly hours are spent responding to help requests from the teachers and students in my building. Nothing will stop the momentum of your One to One movement faster than equipment and software that isn't working when the user needs it to work. The key to my sanity is a helpdesk system that allows me to monitor requests, assign the right person to handle the request and track the completion of the request.

Our district has decided to use School Dudes IT Direct as our technology help desk. This will take care of the hardware and software help side of the One to One system but it has some gaps. School Dudes will be used by the teachers to put in a help request for hardware repair or a software problem. Student netbook users will go to our Library circulation desk to submit a help request to School Dudes through one of our library technicians. All requests will be routed to our lead library technician who will then address the request or delegate it to me or the district technology supervisor.

Let me back track for a moment. In our initial discussions on how to manage loaner equipment, repair requests and power/battery issues, we decided to utilize our library staff and existing "checkout" systems rather than trying to put a new system in place. Students are already used to going to the library circulation desk to check out materials and sign up for activities. Our existing bar coding software can be utilized to track loaner batteries, power cords and netbooks in the same way that we track library materials that have been signed out or are overdue. Our library/media center is also a central location where students feel comfortable coming to do research and work with lab technology.


The drawback of the School Dudes system is that it is only going to be handling the hardware/software requests. It also requires a password and user name to access the request page. I still needed a system to track help requests for integration support, our online gradebook system and Google Apps. I decided to use Google Forms for this. Google Forms is a component of Google Docs. This app allows you to generate a survey style form that can be published on the web and linked to, in this case, the district homepage. Users do not need a login or password so parents can easily access this form. A Google Form has two faces. Its public face can be designed as a series of easy to fill in text boxes, checklists or multiple choice responses. Its private face is an excel spreadsheet that allows the creator to organize and sort information in a variety of ways and present that data in a graphic format when necessary.

Keeping good records and responding quickly to help requests will help make your program successful and encourage your users to try new ways of integrating their technology into their classroom experience.

Guiding Questions for Creating A Help Desk

• What is the available budget for this component of the initiative?
  
• What are the specific areas that users will need support on that we would want to include in the help desk?
• Who will make the initial decisions about which path a help request should follow?
• How will the staff access the help desk?
• How will the students access the help desk?
• What technology staff training will be necessary?
• How will that training be done?
• What end user training will be necessary?
• How will that training be done?
• What usable data might be obtained from the help desk?
  ( breakage patterns, persistent software or network issues, training needs)
• Who will be responsible for looking for these patterns and addressing them?
• What would be considered an acceptable turn around time for a request?
• Who will be making sure that the tech staff is being accountable for addressing requests in this time frame?
  

Transformers

When you think about transformers, you probably think about cool robots that are also cars or planes. With a few quick turns and clicks any child can convert the car to a robot and back again. The robots do things the car can't and take on the world in a whole different way.


Children love transformers and use their imaginations to create all kinds of adventures and battles using these toys.

Districts who are thinking about a one to one program need to realize that the netbooks can also be transformers. Children will now be able to use their imaginations and knowledge to create and share ideas in ways that would never have been possible with paper and pencil. Teachers will be able to collaborate with students and their peers, have access to a global network of resources and teach using real world data. It will be possible to make connections to classrooms beyond the limits of their brick and stone buildings and their fieldtrip budgets. This kind of transformative learning is at the core of the 21st Century Learning concept.

In order for the netbooks to become transformers, initially teachers need to be transformed. This is not an easy task. Their approach to classroom management, assessing student learning, sharing knowledge and mastering content can not just be bent, twisted and clicked into place to create some new, 21st century teacher. Instead, they need to be coached and encouraged to make these changes themselves. They need to see concrete examples of how technology can be used in a transformative way in their classrooms, they need access to tools that work and they need the support and recognition of their peers as they try out new ideas.

The best way I have found to begin this process is to focus on developing the teacher's own 21st century skills, especially research and collaboration. There are many time demands placed on the teachers I work with in my building. Many of them are willing to try new ways to approach their content, but do not have time to find them on their own. Taking time at a staff meeting to train them on how to use a few of the free standards based lesson resources available on the web gives them some easy to use research tools to begin exploring on their own. Thinkfinity.org is a great starting place. This free website features more than 55,000 searchable, standards based lesson resources, primary source materials and interactive learning objects across all content areas. I have used the site's learning objects like the comic creator, the biocube and the dynamic paper creator to demonstrate to teachers how to integrate technology into a content lesson.

Collaboration time is always at a premium, yet collaboration is such a valuable element of the transformation process. One essential tool for collaboration in my district is Google Docs. Our district has a Google Partner Account. This is a free "Google within Google". Students and staff have accounts within this domain. Initially, teachers may feel more comfortable uploading their own document files to Google or creating word docs in Google. These can then be published as webpages and linked to a website for students to access. (click here for an example of how I use this) Once teachers feel comfortable with Google, they can begin to share and collaborate on documents, power points, spread sheets and surveys with other staff members and their students. Users can work together in real time or access the shared work at anytime from any place. It becomes transformative when students and teachers are collaborating through Google. (click here for an example) It is One Simple Tool with many possible applications.

Netbooks should not just be a substitute for textbooks and notebooks. Teachers who can not see past this will not begin to transform the learning in their classrooms. Once teachers are comfortable using the technology to improve their lesson preparation and collaboration time, the next step is to begin to support their attempts at using the technology in new ways. A student with a netbook that can access the internet now has a tool to immediately research questions that come up during a lesson. Students can post their concepts and ideas on a threaded discussion for others to comment on. Online tools like Glogster, Prezi and Animoto let them demonstrate mastery or acquired knowledge in a way that goes beyond posters and powerpoints. Google Forms surveys can be used as formative assessment tools to measure students' prior knowledge or check for understanding during a lesson. Students with a camera and a microphone can now connect with students or experts anywhere in the world to explore careers, share ideas, gather information and explore new cultures. High School level students can begin to create web resources that can be used by others in the district as a part of a service learning component. One of my students is using screencasting to make tutorials for Google Docs. Another group has created a wiki page with 2nd grade math and reading game links for our elementary students to use. My daughter's 5th grade teacher maintains a blog where students can comment on critical thinking problems, current events or writing prompts. He has added Vokis and Google Maps to this blog, and taught his students how to do this on their own blogs. Our elementary technology specialist has worked with teachers to have students film on green screen to do historical figure biographies that they edit on their laptops. Teachers who begin to use their technology to transform their classrooms need to be held up as role models and recognized for their creativity and willingness to think outside the box.

One way to recognize teachers who are becoming transformers is to set aside time at staff meetings to allow them to share their innovations with their peers. Another approach is to work with your local professional development committee to create a CEU program for teachers who attend technology workshops, take online courses that focus on 21st Century skills or who develop and present their own inservice programs to the staff. I am working on developing a certification program for teachers in my district who demonstrate expertise in a variety of technology applications and who are using technology in a transformative way. The first step of this process is to create a rubric that can be used by the teachers to demonstrate their mastery of these areas. Curriculum conversations also need to include ways to integrate 21st Century skills and state technology standards into core curriculum areas.

Finally, in order for teachers to be transformers,they need to have readily available support. My superintendent has allowed for the creation of technology integration specialist positions in each building. Tech specialists can co-teach classes to model technology use, help teachers find resources, do first line trouble shooting, provide staff development and make recommendations for the purchase of additional technology tools. This position should be an essential piece of a successful one to one program. Ideally, there also needs to be a hardware support specialist available to do basic repairs and server maintenance to make sure that the teachers or students are not spending a lot of down time without their computers. In my next blog, I will look at ways to track technology use and technology maintenance.

Guiding Questions for Transformative Technology Planning
For teachers:

• Am I using the netbooks as a subsitute for existing materials in my classroom or am I using it in an innovative way to assess student learning, help students work towards content mastery or develop 21st century skills?
• Are my students passive users of the technology or active users of the technology?
• How has technology changed the way I think about teaching?
• How has technology changed the way I collaborate and communicate with my colleagues?
• How has technology changed the way I collaborate and communicate with my students?
• I am embedding technology into my daily teaching or is it more of a "special event"?
• What are the state technology standards that can be embedded in my course?
• How can I integrate technology standards into my daily lessons?
• How can I integrate 21st century skills into my daily lessons?
• How can I use the technology to differentiate my lessons for different learning styles, different learning levels and different ability groups?
  
• How can I encourage students who have an interest in working with technology hardware or innovating with technology?

For administrators:

• How can I recognize and encourage teachers who are integrating technology in transformative or innovative ways?
• How can I work with my teachers union to incorporate technology integration into our evaluation process?
• What process will I use to decide how to spend my technology budget?
• What changes need to be made in our acceptable use policy to adjust for a one to one initiative?
• Who will make the decisions on what websites will be filtered and for what users?
• What criteria will be used to make decisions about what web based tools and software students and teachers will have access to?

Image Is Everything

Right now my one to one laptop initiative has an image problem. And if we are going to be distributing more than 250 netbooks to students, we need the right image or we will be spending lots of time dealing with frustrated users who can not access online tools or manage information on the netbooks. In the world of one to one computers - where a large group of users will be given computers that all need to look and act the same, image is everything.

First, in the context of computer programing, image is used to describe a capture or snapshot of what applications, plugins and software are available to the user on their desktop, or running in the background from their hard drive to allow access to web based or software applications. For example, many of the interactive learning tools on Thinkfinity.org require Java or Adobe Shockwave plugins to work properly. The desktop may contain shortcuts to word processing tools or frequently used websites. This image can then be used to clone - or recreate - the same desktop conditions for any number of additional computers.

Using our goals and objective for our one to one initiative, we developed a list of the plugins and applications that we wanted to be pre-installed on the student netbooks. Our students will be moving from a Mac environment k-8 to a Windows/Linux/Ubuntu environment at the high school. In order to make decisions about what needed to be included on the netbooks, we were faced with two challenges. Initially, we needed to keep in mind WHAT we wanted students to do with their netbooks. This was based on the 21st Century Learning Curriculum. Secondly, we needed to educate ourselves about the Linux based Ubuntu operating system and explore the opensource software available to come to an agreement about what plugins and software needed to be included in the image to allow the students to do WHAT we wanted them to do.

Guiding Questions for Making Image Decisions

• What tools/applications will allow students to express creativity?
• What tools/applications will allow students to communicate ideas?
• What tools/applications will allow students to collaborate with the peers or teachers?
• What tools/applications will allow students to organize their thinking?
• What tools/applications will allow student to conduct research and share information?
  
• What tools/applications will allow students to access core content materials?
• What tools/applications will allow students with disabilities to access content, research, communicate, share ideas and collaborate with peers and teachers?

FHS List of Recommendations For Our Netbook Image
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dc39nfhs_415vj4997g3

Creating the best image for your netbooks takes time and the willingness to do some research on what would be best for the students within the boundaries of the operating system. There will be a lot of frustration if you choose to use an operating system that you are not familiar with. It also requires a team approach and a lot of communication. Someone needs to be thinking about curriculum and the user end of the netbook image and someone else needs to understand the programming and technical piece. For some districts, it might be useful to bring in an out of district consultant to help with one or both of these pieces. I started a Google Doc for our tech team to share ideas and trouble shooting tips with each other. Most importantly, once a decision about the image has been finalized, the image should be installed on a small number of netbooks to use for a prototype test. These netbooks should be given to students and teachers to be used in real world learning situations to make sure that all the components of the image are working properly and that the students can be successful 21st Century Learners.

My next entry will focus on using the netbooks for 21st Century Learning.