Now the fun begins!

We’ve just finished two weeks of laptop training.  And as of today all of my students at The Academy of Irving ISD have received their laptops.  Now the learning really begins.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want my students to get out of the laptops this year.  This is a powerful piece of equipment we just handed them and while they are in school to learn, should we continue to give the same old typical assignments to them?  Are we really making proper use of the technology given them that way?  There are many articles out there about whether laptops raise test scores or not.  Like this one.  Or this one.  To me it’s not about raising test scores.  It’s about giving them a skill to help them gain a competitive advantage over students who went to high school without laptops.

In addition to the standard laptop training we give our students, I like to spend time talking with them about the responsibility that goes along with the laptops.  There are always going to be critics to what we are doing and why we are doing it.  Teachers can talk and talk about what we are going to do in our classes and how we’ll do things differently but in the end the only ones that can silence the critics are the students.

Irving ISD spends a great deal of money purchasing and maintaining laptops for our students and I for one am happy they do.  That’s what I think anyway…