Why 1:1?

Advocates of technology have long been in the position of defending the contribution of technology to the educational process and outcomes ... and that's a good and necessary thing. After all, technology initiatives are costly, both financially and in terms of the time commitment and human capital required to making educational technology productive. With high stakes, proponents of educational technology need to be able to articulate the vision for technology and put some "skin in the game" with regard to expected outcomes.

The latest "attack" on educational technology came in the form of the New York Times article "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops" As this article illustrates, if the goals for an initiative are poorly articulated, when it comes time to look at the impact, you end up in a "he said / she said" guessing game. Were these laptops supposed to impact student achievement (as measured by state high stakes tests)? Hopefully not, since the research between the causal relationship between educational technology use and high stakes testing is far from definitive. Even the term "educational technology" is incredibly broad. What sorts of interventions are we applying? What supports are in place? And if they were supposed to directly impact test scores, by how much, for which students and by when? Chances are the champions of these laptop initiatives did not put themselves on the hook for specific gains. It's likely that the promised results were very ill defined, and that's where the problem lies.

If we're going to spend the amount of money we're spending on technology, it's beholden on everyone involved to very specifically articulate the desired outcomes and method of measurement. As this article points out, the laptops seem to have had an impact on attendance, motivation and have provided a creative tool and outlet that may help discover the next George Lucas or Steve Jobs. Again, was that the goal?

So why do 1:1 at all? Supposing you've bought the argument that technology is a necessary component of a modern education for all the typical cited reasons (preparedness, engagement, etc.). Why them, should you choose to put a laptop in the hand of every school or teacher rather than just implement labs or portable laptop carts. Incidentally, and this is something we'll explore in a later post, we've found that the cost of implementing a 1:1 program assuming leased laptops is approximately $860 per student per year when you factor in the hardware, software, infrastructure, and personnel cost. That's about 33% more expensive then a laptop cart implementation that would achieve a 4:1 (computer to student ratio). That's a lot, but 1:1 exponentially more expensive which is what most people assume. More importantly than the cost, 1:1 has significant implication for the educational environment, training, and safety requirements within a school so it's not something to be approached lightly.

I think there are four main reasons to do 1:1 rather than a more typical technology approach (e.g., carts or labs). And schools should only undertake 1:1 initiatives if they can sustain the additional capital requirements and want to improve one or more of the following factors.

• Access
  1:1 initiatives take away the barrier of access, both in the classroom and in the homes. Computers are omnipresent and must be integrated. This creates certain pressures on teachers to use computers which can be both positive and negative. Access also creates increased technology proficiency since students and teachers are "owners" of their machines.

• Extended and Personalized
  1:1 initiatives have the potential to both 1) Extend the school day since students can continue working on school projects seamlessly at home and 2) Learning can become much more personalized. One can envision a near future with IEPs for every student and in inexhaustible set of learning experiences that are highly customized and tied into interim assessment data and progress monitoring and delivered via the student's laptop.

• Connected
  1:1 environments foster a collaborative learning environment where students are connected to one another, to teachers, and to the community and beyond. These collaborations foster engagement and there are a multitude of examples of kids collaborating with scientists, researchers, community members, etc.
  

• Authentic
  1:1 environments commonly feature projects with a real-world focus or an emphasis on the creativity and media. Students develop skills that they will take on to subsequent academic pursuits and eventual careers.
  

As I said, 1:1 is not for everyone. Part of what has contributed to the state of affairs described in the New York Times article is schools entering into 1:1 initiatives with ambiguous goals. I suggest that if you value one of the four goals above, you need to make sure that your particular implementation is designed to foster these goals and that you have specific, measurable objectives. If your goal is to extend and personalize the learning experience, what strategies are you employing to make sure that students have high quality, relevant instructional experiences adapted to their particular needs? Can you track inputs (e.g., time spent and curriculum utilized) and outputs (e.g., attainment of instructional goals) by student? It's also important to have a multi-year plan that identifies the costs and milestones for each year of the program.

Educational technology and perhaps particularly 1:1 initiatives will only be "worth" the investment if we articulate why we're doing them in the first place and measure our results to see if we got where we thought we were going.