Laptop Implementation Program - Action Plan Ideal

Laptop Implementation Program - Action Plan

Ideal Classroom

The ideal school in the modern era of global education evokes dynamic and progressive thought to what exactly enables a student population to excel and succeed in life's endeavors. Truly, this is central to any discussion regarding educational reformation via school and classroom development. The critical component to these decisions is inherent to the leadership at the school to understand that, according to Cause & Chen, "the children's active use of technology in making decisions, technology resources in writing and drawing, and logical thinking programs to solve problems and illustrate ideas." (Cause, Chen, 2010)

The ideal school will therefore target the way young children learn and teach accordingly. According to Cause & Chen, an appropriate method to educate the young is to "offer pictures and sounds to support the natural ways that young children learn." (Cause, Chen, 2010) The importance of vision in this area is critical toward establishing a competitive advantage. This advantage will not just separate schools within the same district, municipal jurisdiction, or state lines; this advantage will enable the students to compete in a global economic environment, and is essentially, what will separate nations in the future. This competitive advantage is exactly what leadership is supposed to provide.

The school in its pursuit of establishing an ideal will seek to implement technology as a means to improve educational outcomes. The technology, integrated into the infrastructure of the building essentially creating a 'smart' learning environment. Leadership is a vision for the future of a country and to enable that vision by investing into the creation of an environment where the habits and the technology are there for facilitation. The inspiration is to provide all resources and integrate the learning with technology into a comprehensive approach, able to target the children at the time in their life where they are actively absorbing information about their world in an attempt to understand their environment better. This however, does not speak to the developmental process of reading from a book, and reviewing pictures that show emotions such as sadness, happiness, grumpiness, and so on. This is an area where leadership must facilitate a vision requisite to the adaptation of reading skills from print paper to the technological prowess.

Further evidence of leadership and vision is to advance with a laptop implementation programs as is exampled by the Laptops and Inspired Writing program that facilitated the use of laptops to all students in English language arts classes, attending the grades ranging from grade 5 through grade 10. Littleton Public Schools is the educational institution that is enabling this experience is seeking to inspire the students by facilitating the prospect of research to better enhance their writing skills. Warschauer states, "LPS's instructional program focuses on developing effective and powerful writers by exposing students to the intricacies of diverse genres, modeling good writing in those genres, and providing students with ample opportunities to write in these genres on topics of their interest and share their work with others (Warschauer et al., 2010)

The visionary leadership at Littleton Public School recognized the importance of the resources available on the internet to the development of creative writing and critical writing skills in a global environment. In the U.S. And abroad, colleges and universities are increasingly seeking students with the capability to display these skills. The job market expects these skills to be honed and mastered when one applies to a job at their organization. Therefore, in a state like Michigan, U.S., innovation and vision is a requirement to make that region more competitive to create jobs and train a workforce to grow against a globally competitive environment. To accomplish such a feat, a middle school in Michigan ran a sustainable laptop program.

Ash states, "Now, each classroom at the 900-student school in the Walled Lake Consolidated School District has a smartboard, and teachers have access to a myriad of technologies such as small videocameras called FlipCams, microphones, document cameras, and data projectors. About a third of the students take part in the school's 1-to-1 laptop program, while the rest make use of carts of laptops in the school." (Ash, 2010) "Although the school district emphasizes the importance of technology and several middle schools in it also have 1-to-1 laptop programs, each school runs its own initiative separately." (Ash, 2010)

Laptops for use as resources in modern educational institutional learning facilities is a novel approach to providing the necessary technology platform that students will undoubtedly use throughout their careers. Healy states, "Microsoft's Anytime Anywhere Learning Program (AAL) is considered the father of laptop programs in the United States (Healy, 1999), and recent figures suggest more than 65% of schools have instructional laptops (Market Data Retrieval, 2005). Studies do show that laptops used in academic environments may increase student centered teaching and enhance the students ability to use technology and its application. Considering the technological of our future world, the ability for students to use technology is indeed impactful to the growth and continued sustainment of economic activity.

Additionally, Dawson states, "Results suggest laptop implementation and professional development can lead to increased student centered teaching, increased tool-based teaching, and increased meaningful use of technology." (Dawson et al., 2009) Leadership in education has remained vigilant to find an effective methodology that enables classroom-based learning in a competitive environment where the number of students per teacher is increasing with conventional resources becoming increasingly scarce.

The ideal school, therefore, is a function of a variety of inputs that facilitate the learning process of all students. Notably, the leadership of a school is the critical variable that determines if a school will undertake progressive steps necessary to achieve the goal of properly educating its students. Schools that understand this is a responsibility and not a right will create the ideal school and enable the creation of the ideal classroom.

The state of Florida under the auspice of the Florida Department of Education has leveraged laptop use to complement current teaching practices and pedagogy to enable students in 11 Florida districts to encourage professional development. The program called Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT), is facilitated through funds designated toward the centric goal of providing laptops as a means to alter teaching practices using the convenience and resources accessible through laptop technology. The program supports the effective utilization of laptop technology to integrate a technological-based learning environment conducive to supporting the K-12 curriculum needs.

Dawson et al. states, "The Leveraging Laptops initiative continues Florida's strong tradition of educational technology excellence. Florida has been a leader in educational technology since the legislature funded the Florida Educational Computing Project in 1977 and made instructional technology a permanent division within the Department of Education in 1981 (Dawson, Swain & Baumbach, 2001)

Initiatives such as the aforementioned model in the Florida School System is reflective of the goal to create the ideal classroom. School administrators and other leaders in the school propose an environmental strategy to create a more competitive student body capable of exceeding the information demands inherent in the 21st century global economy. Educational systems are essentially requiring the use of laptops in a greater effort to even the playing field between more developed economies. Penuel et al. states, "Increased technology use and proficiency is the most commonly cited outcome of the laptop implementation (Penuel, 2006; Silvernail & Lane, 2004; Walker, Rockman, & Chessler, 2000)

. "Increased student engagement, motivation, attitude, and confidence (Gardner, Morrison, & Jarman, 1993; Rockman ETAL, 1998; Warschauer, 2006); better school attendance (Laptops for Learning Task Force,2004; Stevenson, 1998); and improved student organization, study skills, and study habits (Warschauer & Sahl, 2002; Warschauer, 2006) are other factors associated with laptop implementation

The ideal classroom will enable students to succeed in today's highly competitive global market that sufficient computing and technological knowledge is required to drive new business and innovation. Thangada et al. states, "As America becomes more deep rooted in technology, it is inevitable that computers will become a part of life, especially in the classroom. It is imperative that computers will become a part of life, especially in the classroom." (Thangada, Al-Dahir, 2009) The learning curve is ostensibly shortened when technology is used to buttress the lesson plan. This enables a greater percentage of students to understand, if not master, a greater percentage of the material that one is expected to learn. The role of laptops in the classroom is also a function involving the increase in the material that students are expected to learn as well as providing a link for students to access a wealth of information on any topic they wish under the direction of trained teaching staff.

The lucid fact is some school systems in varying economies elected to implement a laptop program in their school at a time when this type of investment was not appropriate. Since programs in existence are struggling to continue support of ostensibly, high level computing technology in the classroom, notably include laptops and networking capability, the idea that programs of this nature are sustainable remains skeptical to most. A study of laptop implementation in an urban, underprivileged school system by Mouza revealed that, "laptop integration created enhanced motivation and engagement with schoolwork, influenced classroom interactions, and empowered students." (Mouza, 2008)

The ideal classroom as a function of the ideal school will limit the disparity in educational attainment due to socioeconomic status and will actively address the overarching issue of a lack of funding for these programs and a notable lack of funding in the most vulnerable of communities, which unfortunately include economically disadvantaged minority and ethnic groups. Such results are consistent with the U.S. goal to enable the improvement of the quality of education in an effort to close the achievement gap and provide each student with the knowledge to develop skills and abilities necessary to facilitate the No Child Left Behind Act. According to Mouza, the theory is this. "To achieve these goals, students must be given 21st century tools that simulate authentic work environments. They also need to learn academic content through real-world examples." (Mouza, 2008)

According to Wells & Lewis, "In 2005, the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access in public schools was 3.8:1 compared to 12.1:1 in 1998. Despite these improvements, schools with lower level of minority enrollment still have fewer students per computer than schools with higher minority enrollment.

" (Wells & Lewis, 2006) The ideal school will enable classrooms where students have equal opportunity to access the available resources. Additionally, these ratios indicate a rather alarming reality of the unequal treatment and resource allocation to minority groups in U.S. school systems. Ostensibly, non-minority students do not generally require technology in the classroom due to a higher allocation of resources in the student home and learning environment. The minority student is at a socioeconomic and a sociopolitical disadvantage and may not have a computer for personal use at the home. The public libraries in minority areas serve the residential population of the library's geographic market and do not cater to students nor provide the type of assistance that a minority student would need to obtain an advantage in a global economy.

However, the approximate 1/4 reduction in the number of minority students per computer over several years is certainly a move in the right direction to enable future income stability and growth for the underprivileged minority youth. Wells & Lewis state, "In addition to limited access to technology in school, low-income minority households are also the least likely to be online.

" (Wells & Lewis, 2006) This quote provides a reminder to the notion that minority students are ill-equipped once outside of the classroom to compete with non-minority students. The educational environment may be somewhat closer in minority dominant school systems to that of the non-minority school however, once the class session is over, the students still have homework and studying remaining, and so the learning curve steepens once again. Urban parents of minority backgrounds are statistically not likely to have the education or professional experience necessary to provide assistance to the student at home. Pew states, "It was estimated that approximately 68% of low-income White households did not have access to the internet, compared to 75% of African-American and 74% of Hispanic low-income households

(Pew, 2000)

The relative importance of changing the field of education is due to these types of economic disparities. The urban poor have faced a cycle of poverty that has created a 'bottleneck' in supply of labor to available jobs. As the technological age progresses, the have-nots could be destined to become extinct much the same way dinosaurs went as they could not adapt to a rapidly changing environment. These initiatives provide the necessary means to potentially reverse this cycle and enable the urban poor to new educational heights. Mouza states, "In an effort to bridge the digital divide, several districts have embarked in the implementation of laptop programs. Providing every student with a laptop, which can also be taken home, can have a tremendous impact on students who are currently left out from the world of technology." (Mouza, 2008)

A function of effective leadership and the implementation of progressive change to the pedagogy of education, the provision of a personal student laptop does provide an even field speaking to resources for the underprivileged student to use as a means to better educational outcomes. The perceived threat to such programs however, remains the funding necessary to provide continuous programmatic upgrades and maintenance of laptops to ensure that the program addresses the goals outlined by the program. Roschelle et al. states, "Access to laptop computers can change both how and what students learn, within as well as outside school boundaries. Use of computers can enhance how children learn by supporting four fundamental characteristics of learning: (a) active engagement, (b) participation in groups, (c) frequent interaction and feedback, and (d) connections to real-world contexts.