1:1

As I mentioned in an earlier post I attended Jeff Utecht’s session on 1:1 schools. It was a very engaging and informative session. I will briefly discuss what I took away from the session here. Before I begin I’d like to add that Jeff spoke for about the first 20% of the session and then opened it for discussion. I thought this was very cool. It honored the professionals in the room as well as the experience they brought to the table. Of course there are some universal truths but each school is unique in its own way and Jeff gave other people the opportunity speak and share their knowledge with relation to their particular situation. Even though he took a step back he did keep things moving so the session did not get bogged down on one specific topic. This allowed people to ask questions as well as hear from others who are currently or were recently in similar situations. It became a session about what Jeff and the audience knew about 1:1 schools and not just a session about what Jeff knew about 1:1 schools.

In no particular order here are some tidbits I took from the people who contributed to the session.

  • 1:1 schools/classes needs a container such as moodle, blackboard, blogs, wikis etc
  • Make sure you can take your work with you when you leave a school
  • Use blogs as e-portfolios
  • Install wordpress on to school server save bandwidth
  • Create a 1 platform with OS and 1 image
  • Some schools own the computers, some schools lease them, and some schools make the students buy them.
  • Some schools buy the software because the school get’s a discount on software because they buy so many copies
  • Even at 1:1 schools you don’t have to use tech all the time. It shouldn’t make things more difficult.
  • Google docs are huge

Overall it was a great session. Jeff didn’t make it about him but about the experience in the room and at the same time was very adept at controlling the use of time. There were many knowledgeable people in the room and each felt comfortable enough to share their experience. I think this made the session.

And in parting, keeping with the 1:1 theme of the post I’ll share a 1:1 website that was shared in our session: 1:1 Laptop Schools .