Project Ideas - 1 to 1 laptop initiave

I am working at MMUHS with the principal, Jennifer Botzojorns, and 4 classroom teachers to implement a 1 to 1 laptop initiative this year.  We gave 25 9th grade students HP 6535 laptops to use and keep for the school year.  We are about 1/2 way through the year now and there have definitely been bumps in the road but we are feeling that this is a project that we want to move forward with but have not yet determined how that will look for the next school year.  I would like my project in this class to help me determine what the next year (Part 2) of this project will look like and how it will work.  Here is a website of this year's information on the project that give an overview and more data on what we have done to date. http://help.cesu.k12.vt.us/studentlaptop.html

Things I am seeing as being important in implementing a 1 to 1 laptop initiative are:
1. Be realistic - determine how the program will work, who the participants will be and what the goal of the project is. I think we have the goals determined, who will participate determined but we are still being challenged at this time with the nuts and bolts of how the program will work.  If we could have started over with this pilot program I would have like to have had some professional development and curriculum planning time with the teacher that have the kids with laptops to help them at the start of the year to know how to use them with the kids.

2. Be prepared by understanding and addressing training and development needs.  We have found as we reached the 1/2 way point of this 1 to 1 initiative that when we started we did not have a well enough defined goal for the teachers who had these kids with laptops.  We needed to work more with them on how they would use these laptops in class with the kids.  Another area that we found was in need of improvement was the file management skills of the students.  We thought that they would have a much better handle on how to save files in an orderly fashion, using folders and backing up their data to the server at school on a regular basis.  This has not been the case and we are addressing that now with the students and teachers as the kids begin to work on a term paper, these skills will be reviewed as part of that project.

3. Be supportive!  We have found to date that there needs to be resources for our students and teachers to lean on when the kids run into trouble. We have a tech support Helpdesk at school that the students can bring their laptops to if they are having technical difficulties, or damaged hardware.  They also come to us with general use questions as well.  We have also had to address the issues of some students having a computer of their own at home for the first time ever and the dynamic that plays out as a result of this at home has make some parents call into us for help and support around that.  Finally we have to be a resource for the impacted teachers to come and discuss challenges they have had in the classroom and we try and work out resolutions with them on this.

Going forward, I have to admit that there are some issues that I am still nervous about such as how we will grow this program, what we will use for funds given the current economic situation and how we can support the growth without addition human resources.  These are the challenges of my job that make it exciting and never the same from day to day.  Stay Tuned!
Jean