Laptop Initiative Creates Equal Educational Opportunities

The Freedom to Learn program has dramatically changed the physical and mental climate of our school and classrooms. It has created equal educational opportunities for all of our students. The three-year journey was met with many stresses and frustrations; however, our eager excitement for the potential of the program far outweighed the stresses we encountered. Initially, our staff met as a technology committee to prepare for the arrival of the laptops. We tried to predict all of the changes that would take place in our building as a result of the increased technologies, and attempted to prepare ourselves for them. As our excitement mounted, we began to talk with the students about their entrance to our school. Not having a tangible machine to show the students, they were skeptical as to whether they would arrive at all. October turned into November, November into December, and so forth until January arrived and we were ready to roll out the machines to our students. Mother Nature had her own ideas though, with a major snow storm forcing us to cancel our parent and student orientation meetings twice before we finally just had to have the meeting regardless of the weather. Fortunately, we had 100% of our parent and student population in attendance at our orientations, and laptops in the hands of our students within the first week. We now had 45 sixth-graders with laptops, which had wireless Internet access, in their possession 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Little did we know, we were oblivious to the changes that were about to occur. In our early technology meetings, we were certain that in order for the program to be successful we would have to obtain student, parent and teacher ownership of the machines and the program. We began this process by having a parent orientation meeting that required both the parent and the child to attend and learn about the care and applications of the machines. Having this parent and student meeting together laid out our expectations for the use of it at home and in school. We even provided an acceptable usage policy that both the parent and student had to agree to and sign. This policy provided our expectations and consequences for misuse of the computer. Having this buy-in from the parents created a relationship between parents, teachers and administrators that let the students understand which discipline would be enforced if necessary. Within our classrooms, we created management policies that were similar among all classrooms so the students knew what was expected of them. However, as time went on, we had to modify both our classroom and school management policies due to misuse and improper handling of the computers. We quickly realized that students could find ways to outsmart us since technology was their way of life and something we had to assimilate to. As students began to outsmart us, and found inappropriate uses of the technology in a school setting, we continued to modify our management policies to remain one step ahead of them. The students drove us not only in management issues, but also in learning and in their new enthusiasm for doing so. Suddenly, doing schoolwork and homework was not such a bad thing if it could be done on their laptops. Students who were previously uninterested in school, or who did the minimum requirements for assignments, were now more involved in their own learning and putting effort into schoolwork. Our special education students thrived now that they had the tools to help express themselves. Our top students started seeking ways to put higher-level thinking into their work. Our average students, who had previously completed the bare-minimum requirements, began to reach their potential because they were genuinely interested in what they could accomplish using the laptops. Our ADHD and behavior problem students made remarkable changes as well. We realized this one day when the only sound coming from our classroom was the clicking of the keys as the students quickly typed their assignments and researched their work on the laptops. …