Stuff this week - How to do a successful 1:1 device program (Part 2)?
As I alluded to last week the decision on which device to purchase should be made after months of planning. Schools should be considering what they do now, how technology could enhance their teaching, exactly what they would like to do and how they can measure student success. Only after this is done will it become clear which type of device would be ideal and how many are needed.
One of the major things to be investigated when embarking on a 1:1 device program is the school's existing IT infrastructure. Teachers regularly complain that they are time poor in the classroom and so use of devices cannot further impinge on this (the devices should be freeing up time). For example, slow network speeds causing video buffering or laggy web browsing would be counterproductive.
Common Sense Media have a great tech readiness rubric to use to evaluate a school’s network and future proofing is essential as data consumption and bandwidth hungry applications are increasing exponentially. In terms of internet speed there is no golden rule but as a rough guide the Federal Communications Commission in the USA currently have the benchmark set in 2013 at 100 kbps per student although this is changing to 1 Mbps per student in 2018. YouTube state that a minimum of 500 kbps is required to watch their videos and I would suggest that this would be the current day minimum bandwidth per student with infrastructure in place that will allow significant expansion of this in the future. Crazily I think many schools fall short in this fundamental requirement. Retail household connections are available at 100Mbps and I would therefore expect a school would have at least this much bandwidth.
The other crucial element to the program is teacher training. There are free courses available such as Google’s Certified Educator program (which is useful regardless of device) and Microsoft has an ambassador who can visit the school and provide guidance. Ultimately though the training must be to such depth that that teachers feel completely comfortable with what they plan to achieve with the device and how they will measure success. If a school is making it up as they go along and experimenting then they likely have not established the SMART goals I mentioned earlier..
So I think that it is possible to have a successful device program and there are schools such as St Patrick's in Gympie that are showing the way. However, it takes effort and commitment to devise a sound strategy that can be communicated to the parent body to justify the risk and expense. This strategy must be able to be evaluated to show that ultimately, that risk and expense was justified.
Schools need to approach the problem from the point of view of what do they want to do NOT from a preconceived notion of what hardware or software they are going to use. Providing extensive training to the teachers should be non-negotiable.
Do you think the teachers and school was prepared for any 1:1 roll-out you have been involved in? How did the school measure success of the program? Did they start with outcomes or hardware?
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