Laptop project continued.....

I found in the last few weeks a growing frustration with the students in our laptop 1:1 pilot program that we are working with this year.  Students were not bringing in their laptops to school when they were needed in class, student damage was on the rise, misuse of the laptops was occurring on a regular basis resulting in viruses and misuse of our school network.  As I expressed my frustration with these issues with our principal, she helped me to have some insight on the situation that I had not thought about.  She asked me if some of the students were finding the project a good thing, and were being responsible and doing what they were asked with the laptops.  The answer was yes, that at least 1/2 the students were having successful experiences with the laptops. 

She pointed out to me that the laptops will not work with all students and that not all kids learn in the same way.  This seems like such an obvious observation now but at the time I wanted all of them to work flawlessly and that is just not going to happen when you have multiple people involved in a project.

Now is the time for me to figure out how to help the group of kids that are not as successful to shift that for themselves and their classmates and use the equipment in a better way or reallocate it to another group that may use it better.

How can technology be assessed?

How can technology be assessed to demonstrate “independent” use by learners and still focus on curricular content?

Some educators in Chittenden County have been addressing this question this school year in the form of scenarios that exhibit age appropriate assignments that truly incorporate technology into the curriculum and also take into consideration the Vermont Technology Grade Expectations TGE's and National Educational Standards for Students NETs standards.  Take a look at them here:
http://transformation-technology.wikispaces.com/

This is also a great example of using a wiki.    

I think these examples are ambitious but they include great ideas that teachers can take part of or the whole thing to use in the classroom.

1:1 laptop initiatives

I am wondering where to find quantitative and qualitative data against the implementation of 1:1 laptop initiatives.  I have found plenty of articles that talk in favor of doing this but I want to know if it really does increase student learning.  Has anyone seen any articles that talks about this?