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Return to the "Vision Page" or the Main Laptop page
End of Pilot Feedback
Our first year of using laptops as a mobile lab in the elementary school has been one of marked success. After some initial organizational restructuring in terms of schedules and hardware adjustment, the laptop program has proven to be a very viable educational program for the students and teachers in the fourth grade. At the start of the year, we stated that our students would use the laptops in several ways. What follows is a reflection about how that has occurred with examples from the classes.
Laptops were to be used to promote active learning in which the students manipulate information in a meaningful task that supports their learning rather than using the technology as an end goal in and of itself. One example of this was in 4-H, where Mr. Harrits had his student use an Excel program on the laptops to learn about probability, a unit found in the fourth grade Everyday Math curriculum. The children were able to manipulate variables, and see patterns in the numbers, at a faster pace and thus learned the key objectives of the unit quicker.
The laptops were to be appropriate for the task at hand and are used with, and for, reflection by the students about what they are doing. One of the signature elements of the fourth grade curriculum is our yearlong Bunka study. This is where all the students study some aspect of Japanese culture each month topped by a culminating series of trips in May. Given the parameters of the trips, pencil and paper were the best tools for the job, although we could have lugged the laptops. However, reflecting on what happened on the trip and how it connected to the Japanese culture, was often done on the laptops back in the classrooms. Examples of each class doing so can be found on the 4th Grade Bunka page.
One of the other aspects of laptops was that they were to involve students in
tasks they are interested and invested
in. Often, interest was peaked when they were used within in a social and
cooperative setting. At the start of the
year, both 4-C and 4F were able to use the laptops in just such a way. They were
able to combine their study of the Fuchu area and the adjacent Tama river with
Kathy Krauth's ninth grade social studies class' study of river societies in a
comparative web based project. Each group was able to gain information from each
other and having the laptops allowed for flexibility in scheduling, open-ended
grouping and in web construction.
The last goal of the laptop program was to provide tasks that were
open-ended and real world in nature. An
example of this is 4-S and 4-N's electronic portfolios. Each student through the
course of the year, was able to select signature pieces of work that reflected
what he or she considered exemplars of their best work. The choices were left up
to them with the target audience being their family and friends located across
the globe. Being able to share work you are proud of, with the people you hold
most dear, is as real and as important to the students as one could hope for.
As a pilot team we are very proud of what we have accomplished this year and we are looking forward to what we will be able to do next year. We will be looking at ways in which we can improve the depth by which we apply the attributes listed above as well as discovering new methods by which we can make the laptops more seamless to our overall curricular program.
Grade 4 Team
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