How to start a parent-funded laptop program?

13

March

Paul Reid12:01 am7 Comments

Paul Fuller was our special guest in a live Digital Chalkie webcast in this conversation around how one globally aware primary school got their one-to-one parent funded notebook program off the ground please tune-in. Paul explains about the students’ reactions, planning, financing, technical and pedagogical shifts.

Below is a podcast of Digital Chalkie webcast #6: How to start a parent funded notebook programme in a Primary School recorded on 8 p.m (WST) Thursday 13 2008:

We find out what happens if you give a kid their own device with access to the connected world? Why have Rudd/Gillard and Smith got it right with this policy of trying to get computers into the hands of students? Or do you have a different opinion?

This is a slideshow from one of the presentations Paul gave to the school community:

To get the discussion rolling before the webcast, I posted this text below to a few email lists, sourced from this website here. This piece was posted on the Abilene, Kansas High School Dialogue Buzz website during the spring of 2003. It was an anonymous post by a student, but is VERY powerful.

Let’s have a little competition at school and get ready for the future. I will use a laptop and you will use paper and pencil. Are you ready…?
I will access up-to-date information - you have a textbook that is 5 years old.
I will immediately know when I misspell a word – you have to wait until it’s graded.
I will learn how to care for and harness technology by using it – you will read about it.
I will see science concepts in 3D – you will do the odd problems.
I will create artwork and poetry and share it with the world – you will share yours with the class.
I will have 24/7 access – you have the entire class period.
I will access the most dynamic information – yours will be printed and photocopied.
I will communicate with leaders and experts using email – you will wait for Friday’s speaker.
I will select my learning style – you will use the teacher’s favorite learning style.
I will collaborate with my peers from around the world – you will collaborate with peers in your classroom.
I will take my learning as far as I want – you must wait for the rest of the class.
The cost of a leased laptop per year? - $250
The cost of teacher and student training? – Expensive
The cost of well educated Australian citizens and workforce? - Priceless

Here are some key points made by Paul on the programme:

- OGPS is a public primary (K-7) with only 120 students

- We are rolling out laptops for all students 4 - 7 (60 students)

- We are using the base model MacBooks with combo drives.

- Most are parent funded (combination of leasing and purchasing)

- Families in financial hardship (approx 20%) are provided with a
laptop by the school for use during school hours only. Many of these
families are already seeing the value of a take-home laptop and many
are trying to find the funds if they can.

- Parents are given the choice of purchasing outright or leasing.
Machines will be upgraded every 2 years.

- Prices include AppleCare extended warranty and insurance.

- Families who purchased outright won’t be able to claim any tax
rebate, as it starts in 2008-09. My understanding is that families who
lease will be able to claim the component of their lease costs that
fall within that financial year.

- I won’t disclose any of the pricing at this stage (commercial-in-
confidence) except to say that we were very happy with the way that
Apple supported the school.

- As always, the key to this process has been getting buy-in from
staff and parents.

- And before you say “But my school can’t afford that” …. remember
we are a dirt poor public school one suburb across from Maddington.
What we do have is an amazing school community where the staff,
parents, kids and Principal understand and support what we are trying
to do.

- Someone described us last year as a ’small community school with a
global vision’. I like that

7 Responses to “How to start a parent-funded laptop program?”

It’s odd that we still tend to think that schools need to somehow own or control the computers that kids use. As a result, we’ve created our own ball-and-chain of providing maintenance, support, re-imaging, security etc.

Why not work towards a culture shift where kids or families ARE EXPECTED to own a computer (c’mon, with 50% tax deductibility and sub-$500 laptops, the per-year cost is pretty low) and let them be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance. Schools don’t feel responsible for the cars that parents use to drive the kids to school, nor the washing and repair of school uniforms,etc. Why are we so obsessed with looking after the computers they use?

Yes, some kdis will break things they own, like they break their phones. But is it possible to change that culture, so if you break it you miss out on things you want?

Perhaps a model where schools provide the connectivity, storage, online services and maybe keyboard/screens, and kids own the rest?

At present we have a collection of computers maintained at considerable cost, and only available 6 or 7 hours a day, 200 days a year. Lots of effort for 1400 hours a year…

With Web2.0 providing much of the apps and storage, and kids owning their own computers (including maintaining them), schools might operate differently.

Should schools own computers, or should kids?

What about the have nots? Many many families can not afford $250 a year.

Hi Ken,
I like you point about ownership. Theoretically in a perfect world kids would bring along whatever laptop they liked and all apps would be accessible online. Things are changing and we may be there soon but having had experience of running a 1:1, most apps used on a daily basis are on the drive and teachers direct kids, who sometimes are not the most tech-savvy users we think they are to the app for the lesson.
When you have a plethora of different notebooks and apps in your class, you are effectively saying to the teachers “you can’t get every kid on the same page unless it is online”. In my experience, this is the best way to turn your teachers off supporting a 1:1. By all means, nurture your teachers away from the “everyone does the same thing at once” style of teaching but support them by having some uniformity on the notebooks initially so that they can make headway.
The way that we did this was to have a standard notebook and image. Yes, that made us responsible but it also streamlined the support. Kids who messed with their computer and stopped it connecting or were caught off-task with an inappropriate app in class had a quick reimage. (They usually hated this as it wiped all the “other” files that weren’t allowed on our network!)
Cheers
Paul

Hey guys!
Please can you let us know about whether the podcast is up yet?
ta
Blitto

Some interesting comments here. Students need a creative/communication machine that is not a business machine purely for productivity. The total cost of ownership is currently outweighing the total opportunity of ownership amongst policy makers. Current school deployments put Microsoft Office on a machine and send it out to schools. How useful is this business tool to students K-12 wanting to be creative and communicative? If they want to be creative and they need other software installed but students can’t because they don’t have rights to manage the machines. Paul Fuller has chosen to promote MacBooks which have come pre-installed with a plethora of integrated tools that share date/media between them and allow students to grip/fix/turn their ideas into something new. Paul Fuller is passionate that he wants his students to communicate and create their own meaning generation around curriculum content back to their teachers and to their peers - he has equipped this community of practice around a device with 3 years of technical support that will allow for a great journey we will follow with interest.

Ken - I wholeheartedly agree that with some percentile of ownership by the parents/students it puts the responsibility on the users to firstly look after the device and also to manage and maintain them. The end game recognises that 21C learners need access to the connected world in which they live to learn well and with consequence. I do think there needs to be some uniformity in the device so that technical support is achieved within the cohort. As Paul Fuller pointed out in the webcast, he was impressed at how quickly a community of practice formed around the point-of-need tech support - parents-students-teachers. An organically formed social network around a need and desire to help each other succeed. Provide the opportunity and freedom of ownership, and the rest will follow.

Paul McMahon - You make a good point about putting teachers off if everything is online. The student management of their media and work locally is still where we are despite the momentum to placing our data in the cloud. A some stage in the learning process some teachers are empowering students to collaborate, debate and generate answers with their peers as part of an online discussion board for example and this engaging process will experience success. Where does the teacher sit in this picture? Dr Jim http://futurepd.org agrees that teachers need to learn to be conductors rather than trying to be the whole band. Only then will the students gradually become equipped to communicate effectively on the complicated issues of our times.

Podcast of the webcast up soon Blitto.

The ownership issue is ultimately a technology issue: we’re still living in the post-mainframe days. The mainframe died in the early 1980s (well, it’s still living in certain places, long live Cobol!) and was replaced by the PC. The PC is, however, a terrible technology in which your PC is meaningful (which you’ll notice if you ever your PC stolen/burned in a fire/dropped by airport security). The future is thin-client and the individual PC stops making much of a difference. Just like the schools must own the desks the students sit on, they will have to own the computers the students use to access their virtual machines, which will be in a different building and perhaps on a different continent.

Dan

1. Ken from The Great South Land | March 13th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
It’s odd that we still tend to think that schools need to somehow own or control the computers that kids use. As a result, we’ve created our own ball-and-chain of providing maintenance, support, re-imaging, security etc.

Why not work towards a culture shift where kids or families ARE EXPECTED to own a computer (c’mon, with 50% tax deductibility and sub-$500 laptops, the per-year cost is pretty low) and let them be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance. Schools don’t feel responsible for the cars that parents use to drive the kids to school, nor the washing and repair of school uniforms,etc. Why are we so obsessed with looking after the computers they use?

Yes, some kdis will break things they own, like they break their phones. But is it possible to change that culture, so if you break it you miss out on things you want?

Perhaps a model where schools provide the connectivity, storage, online services and maybe keyboard/screens, and kids own the rest?

At present we have a collection of computers maintained at considerable cost, and only available 6 or 7 hours a day, 200 days a year. Lots of effort for 1400 hours a year…

With Web2.0 providing much of the apps and storage, and kids owning their own computers (including maintaining them), schools might operate differently.
2. Ken Price from The Great South Land | March 13th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Should schools own computers, or should kids?
3. Wayne Eglinton | March 13th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
What about the have nots? Many many families can not afford $250 a year.
4. Paul McMahon | March 14th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Hi Ken,
I like you point about ownership. Theoretically in a perfect world kids would bring along whatever laptop they liked and all apps would be accessible online. Things are changing and we may be there soon but having had experience of running a 1:1, most apps used on a daily basis are on the drive and teachers direct kids, who sometimes are not the most tech-savvy users we think they are to the app for the lesson.
When you have a plethora of different notebooks and apps in your class, you are effectively saying to the teachers “you can’t get every kid on the same page unless it is online”. In my experience, this is the best way to turn your teachers off supporting a 1:1. By all means, nurture your teachers away from the “everyone does the same thing at once” style of teaching but support them by having some uniformity on the notebooks initially so that they can make headway.
The way that we did this was to have a standard notebook and image. Yes, that made us responsible but it also streamlined the support. Kids who messed with their computer and stopped it connecting or were caught off-task with an inappropriate app in class had a quick reimage. (They usually hated this as it wiped all the “other” files that weren’t allowed on our network!)
Cheers
Paul
5. Blitto | March 16th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Hey guys!
Please can you let us know about whether the podcast is up yet?
ta
Blitto
6. Paul Reid | March 16th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Some interesting comments here. Students need a creative/communication machine that is not a business machine purely for productivity. The total cost of ownership is currently outweighing the total opportunity of ownership amongst policy makers. Current school deployments put Microsoft Office on a machine and send it out to schools. How useful is this business tool to students K-12 wanting to be creative and communicative? If they want to be creative and they need other software installed but students can’t because they don’t have rights to manage the machines. Paul Fuller has chosen to promote MacBooks which have come pre-installed with a plethora of integrated tools that share date/media between them and allow students to grip/fix/turn their ideas into something new. Paul Fuller is passionate that he wants his students to communicate and create their own meaning generation around curriculum content back to their teachers and to their peers - he has equipped this community of practice around a device with 3 years of technical support that will allow for a great journey we will follow with interest.

Ken - I wholeheartedly agree that with some percentile of ownership by the parents/students it puts the responsibility on the users to firstly look after the device and also to manage and maintain them. The end game recognises that 21C learners need access to the connected world in which they live to learn well and with consequence. I do think there needs to be some uniformity in the device so that technical support is achieved within the cohort. As Paul Fuller pointed out in the webcast, he was impressed at how quickly a community of practice formed around the point-of-need tech support - parents-students-teachers. An organically formed social network around a need and desire to help each other succeed. Provide the opportunity and freedom of ownership, and the rest will follow.

Paul McMahon - You make a good point about putting teachers off if everything is online. The student management of their media and work locally is still where we are despite the momentum to placing our data in the cloud. A some stage in the learning process some teachers are empowering students to collaborate, debate and generate answers with their peers as part of an online discussion board for example and this engaging process will experience success. Where does the teacher sit in this picture? Dr Jim http://futurepd.org agrees that teachers need to learn to be conductors rather than trying to be the whole band. Only then will the students gradually become equipped to communicate effectively on the complicated issues of our times.

Podcast of the webcast up soon Blitto.
7. Daniel | March 17th, 2008 at 8:36 am
The ownership issue is ultimately a technology issue: we’re still living in the post-mainframe days. The mainframe died in the early 1980s (well, it’s still living in certain places, long live Cobol!) and was replaced by the PC. The PC is, however, a terrible technology in which your PC is meaningful (which you’ll notice if you ever your PC stolen/burned in a fire/dropped by airport security). The future is thin-client and the individual PC stops making much of a difference. Just like the schools must own the desks the students sit on, they will have to own the computers the students use to access their virtual machines, which will be in a different building and perhaps on a different continent.

Dan

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