Students in sixth grade at Sandwich Central School in the Inter-Lakes School District use
Chromebooks during a lesson while mentoring younger students.
Annual school supply lists have changed little over the last few decades. But during the last decade the cost of what is going into kids’ backpacks has grown substantially as school districts invest thousands on tablets and laptops for every student.
While some Granite State schools are supplying these devices to students, exactly how many is unknown as data is kept at neither a state nor national level. There are now at least half a dozen NH schools providing notebooks (a more limited laptop) or tablets, with one school, Windham, providing Apple laptops, to all students in certain grades.
Nearby in Maine, all students receive tablets. And there are many more schools that would sign on to the “one-to-one” computing initiative in lieu of computer labs if budgets allowed.
Computers are just one component of NH’s “anytime, anywhere” learning agenda, which is part of NH’s competency-based education policy that allows students to learn via independent projects and show what they’ve learned for credit.
Even though digital devices may be second nature to students and their parents,regular classroom use comes with many stumbling blocks: schools need to plan for a robust networking infrastructure, shop around for competitive pricing, train teachers, manage excessive screen time, safeguard privacy and raise the needed funds.
The Value of Technology
Laptops and tablets do not replace teachers. But research suggests that they do allow teachers to invigorate learning for students and customize instruction. Mark Warschauer, associate dean at the University of California’s School of Education and author of several books on digital media in the classroom, says the proof is in the data. A study co-authored by Warschauer of 57 studies on one-to-one programs between 2001 and 2013 found that one-to-one programs showed a modest increase in math, science, reading, writing, and language arts, with the strongest gains in writing and mathematics. No numerical data was provided, but Warschauer says studies have shown that when students have access to their own portable technology, they are more likely to drive projects based on their interests and skill level, allowing them to become more engaged in their learning.
That said, high-end technology won’t make a bad school good, but Warschauer says it may make a good school with high-quality curriculum better.
Bob Dawson, the principal of Windham High School, agrees on that point. In Windham, where median household incomes are double those around the state, all freshmen receive new Macbook Air laptops for around $900 per student and have done so since 2009. They keep them through their senior year, after which Windham High refurbishes them for the middle school. The laptops are paid for through the school budget.
In Pat Kablo’s physics class, students use the laptops to record the motion of a steel marble down a ramp, capturing on camera its trajectory in super-slow, high definition mode. Using the Logger Pro software, they then collect hundreds of data points along the way to determine the horizontal and vertical components of the ball’s velocity, as well as its acceleration. At home, they have a visual record of the experiment and can analyze the data frame by frame. “This is a game-changer, and one that improves engagement and ownership over concept,” Kablo says.
Warschauer says if instructors use devices efficiently, they can tweak curriculum for more than one type of learner because students can drive their own projects and advance at their own pace using web-based programs. Technology also helps the state meet its own new standards for learning. Since the 2008-09 school year, the NH Department of Education requires high schools to develop competency-based approaches, where teachers let students progress to the next level based on their mastery of core competencies, rather than time spent in class.
John Martin, the newly-hired technology director at the Inter-Lakes School District in the Lakes Region and former technology director for Plymouth Elementary, sees a movement underfoot across the state, particularly with the shift to competency-based learning, for personalizing educational experiences. Both web-based and purchased software play a role in that, he says, allowing individual students to accelerate in math, for example, or to reinforce a concept they’re not yet grasping.
Tablets are prepared for distribution at Plymouth Elementary School.
Paying for Progress
The main challenge to the one-to-one initiative is cost. Ideally, says Martin, “I would have loved to put laptops in the hands of every student, but the reality was that’s not a cost-effective solution.”
For Windham, the annual $200,000 plus cost of buying new Macbooks is within its budget, but that is not the case for many other towns. Inter-Lakes could not afford the $900 laptops and instead chose cheaper Chromebooks, designed primarily for web surfing and basic online applications. Inter-Lakes, based in Meredith, piloted a one-to-one program three years ago with Chromebooks for grades six to nine. The program was so successful, says Martin, that the district expanded it to grades four to 12.
Favorite software picks at Plymouth Elementary include the language learner app Duolingo, where students record their voices in Spanish outside of class and refine their pronunciations in front of the teacher. Another study tool, Quizlet, tests knowledge in a variety of subjects with sets of digital flash cards and interactive games.
Barnstead Elementary provides Chromebooks for its 170 sixth through eighth graders for less than $300 per student. The program started six years ago and is part of the budget. “Like a chalkboard, it’s another tool,” says Principal Tim Rice, who emphasizes the teacher is always at the helm.
Martin is a fan of the Chromebooks because of the Google apps suite, its massive Cloud storage, and the software upgrades that occur seamlessly in the background. For richer software features not provided by Chromebooks, tablets such as the Apple iPad fit the bill for younger students because of their simple touchscreens. However, the lack of a detachable keyboard renders them less efficient for writing. They’re also not as easy to administer in enterprise environments and are more expensive than Chromebooks.
More recently, Martin was involved with the rollout at Plymouth Elementary. That project spans three years and will likely expend $180,000 total when this 3rd year ends. That project precipitated a rework of the school’s wireless infrastructure and modifications to the Internet connection. Last year, middle schoolers in grades six through eight received Asus transformer tablets for $348 per student, inclusive of the Google Play license. The school is expanding the program to grades three to five, and eventually to kindergarten through grade 2.
When Concord closed several of its elementary schools and built three new ones, the district had seed money from the construction project to develop a one-to-one initiative. The district leases the iPads for around $380 per device and currently provides the tablets in grades one to eight, or 2,645 students.
Students are growing up with iPads, so they’re comfortable using them, says Concord’s technology director, Pam McLeod, who was the founding co-chair of the state’s Consortium for School Networking chapter. Over time, says McLeod, schools acclimate to new ways of teaching that reduce the need for paper, printers and textbooks. In math, for example, many of the materials are online.
Best Practices
School principals, teachers and administrators recognize that students are savvy technology users, and that a high percentage use their mobile devices at home to research, write and prepare presentations. “So why ask kids to power down when they come to school?” asks Christine Martin, principal of Webster Elementary in Manchester. Still, Martin is not an advocate of one-to-one. She says she likes to see individual students in group activities reaching for their portable devices much as they would a pencil or a ruler, but not as a class exercise where the teacher asks all students to open their screens. Webster Elementary is one of many schools choosing—for philosophical or financial reasons—a Bring Your Own Device policy (BYOD). Students in grades three to five are allowed, with signed permission from their parents, to store their mobile devices in a classroom repository. Extra Chromebooks are on hand to ensure no one gets left out. The kids understand ownership of these devices is a privilege, says Martin. If abuses like plagiarism or cyber-bullying occur, the principal disciplines.
But some parents say their kids need to be old fashioned about it and spend enough time off digital devices. When Frances Richmond Middle School in Hanover launched its iPad one-to-one program with eighth graders two years ago, some parents and teachers had concerns about limiting access to inappropriate content and also the amount of screen time students had during the day. So the middle school launched a parent-teacher advisory committee, says Marty Warren, the school’s technology director. Frances Richmond, like most schools, employs content filters. As for screen time, the committee initiated a text-free lunchtime, where students are banned from talking, texting or surfing on any mobile device while in the cafeteria.
Such policies will set schools and students up for success in the future, as Warschauer thinks many more schools will look like Windham in the future. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one-to-one was the norm in 10 years.”