Microsoft Educator Network

1:1 Learning What Can Failing Restaurants Tell Us about 1-to-1? Recently I was reading some articles on 1-to-1 programs that didn’t live up to expectations. This is not a new story, of course. But there sometimes is a tendency to believe that giving a device to every student in a school or district or subset of this is miraculously going to solve all ills: Test scores will rise! Technology skills will skyrocket! Students will be engaged! The community will support us more fully! People will visit! Everyone will love us! It’s the ...

4 comments

1:1 Learning 10 Things to Keep In Mind When Planning 1:1 Conversion The process of converting a school or district to a 1:1 teaching and learning model can be full of unexpected challenges. Here are 10 things for administrators and leaders to keep in mind as they begin the planning process for district digital conversion (DDC) projects. 1) Have a clear definition of success and how it will be measured. Take time during planning to create realistic and adaptable goals. 2) Do it yourself is often the most expensive approach. Understand true costs and seek to ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Challenges to Common Core State Standards Testing Create Opportunities for New Solutions There has been heated debate over the Common Core State Standards and how they will impact our students. The new standards bring with them not just instructional, but also technical challenges. Between March 24 and June 6 of this year, more than 4 million students in 36 states and the District of Columbia will take near-final versions of the new tests. The technical and logistical aspects of the tests pose a challenge for both large and small school districts alike. The State Educational ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Practice makes perfect In Finland we have a saying “harjoitus tekee mestarin” which is best translated as “practice makes perfect”. If anything, mobile devices as tools to learn offer the possibilities to practice. A study after study concludes that the one item people always carry with them is their mobile phone. Mobile technology frees knowledge, information and education from the constraints of classrooms, and it provides access to learning when and where preferred. Take as an example. To answer the request from ...

5 comments

1:1 Learning Sorry, but the type of device still matters. Several years ago, a seasoned 1:1 educator declared "the OS wars are over...and nobody won." What he meant was that despite the great debate between Windows and Mac OS in schools, when you boiled it down to accomplish the work of teaching and learning it really didn't matter. Obviously, he was a strong proponent of manufacture agnostic administration and BYOD, but I think he had a point. The latest "war" is being waged between laptops and tablets (and smartphones to a degree) and I have several ...

2 comments

1:1 Learning Mobile learning: new kid on the block? Welcome to 2004 (and no, there is no typo here!)– after a year of planning and conceptualization Nokia, Globe Telecom, the Department of Education, Pearson Foundation and Ayala Foundation started to implement the in the Philippines. Mobile devices and the Nokia Education Delivery solution were harnessed to allow for downloading quality educational materials on math, science, English and values education in the most . Technology combined with lesson plans that follow the primary education ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Next Generation Classroom Management There’s no denying that technology will soon become ubiquitous in the classroom. Recently, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years. With the push to go digital, it’s only a matter of time before 1:1 implementation is widely adopted in our schools. With 1:1 implementation comes the challenges of managing a classroom full of students with their ...

0 comments

1:1 Learning Stop the 1:1 Madness!! I know…this is kind of an odd post to be included in the PIL 1:1 Hot Topic…please bear with me. My district is what could be classified as a 1:1 district. We have given our students in grade 8-10 the opportunity to extend their learning by distributing Windows 8.1 tablets. By 2015-2016 school year all students in grades 6-12 will have our tablets….with dreams of extending it K-12. I’ve read the literature and connected with other 1:1 districts…so I’m in…I get it…I “drink the Kool-Aid.” Early in ...

2 comments

1:1 Learning BYOD: Not For Me At the Global Forum last week, I had some conversations with other educators about the idea of Bring Your Own Device in One-to-One programs. I’ve been involved with Kent School District’s One-to-One since 2005, from planning to teaching and now supporting. The short answer to my opinion is this: I don’t like it. Support One of the reasons I don’t like BYOD is because it is difficult to support from a centralized perspective. In my district, we struggle to help students through home wireless ...

4 comments

1:1 Learning Adopting 1:1 in a Massachusetts school Learn why the Williston Northampton School in Massachusetts chose the Surface Pro with Windows 8 for every student and faculty member to help bring one-to-one learning to life. ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Learning from March Madness March madness is here. My team lost the Big Ten Tournament Championship yesterday (University of Michigan vs Michigan State University) so I’m in recovery mode. I watched the battle this time with great interest in players’ skill, technique and seamless ability to adapt to the quick moves, change-ups and turnarounds that happen repeatedly in this kind of contest. Michigan State suffered this season with the loss of their top players to injuries. Now they are back! The physical/mental/emotional ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning 1-to-1: Starting Well I have visited and consulted for schools in the U.S. and overseas around 1-to-1 and also . These schools are in varying stages of planning, implementation, rollout, refresh and analysis. Most want advice on how their programs are going in any of these stages. There is always the chance to return and correct, but schools save themselves the most time if they start well. Here are some pointers for this: o Involve all your stakeholders in the visioning and planning. While not every person can sit on...

3 comments

1:1 Learning Deploying a Successful 1-to-1 Strategy. Mar 12th at 5:00pm, room 116/117 @ the Microsoft Global Forum in Barcelona. To learn more about the forum please use this link In order to be successful with a 1:1 initiative, it is prudent to have a clear vision with actionable and measurable goals. As a leader, it is important to look at the vision for your school and lay out clear expectations. You also must understand the changing role of educators, provide appropriate levels of professional development, as well as design a strong implementation plan that includes parent communication, security, budget and ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Disrupt? No, Enable! Reading “Monuments of Tech” by Quentin Hardy, in Sundays NY Times (), I thought about applying scenarios presented to traditional schools. At the Facebook (FB) offices in Menlo Park, California, no one has an office. Space is mentally and emotionally reconfigured to encourage experimentation, risk, trial and error and personal and group analysis. The unofficial motto is ‘hack’…we’ve learned the downside of malicious hacking activities – but at FB they’ve adopted this in the engineering ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes It is a human condition to resist ‘change’. It is also a natural tendency to debunk solutions to obstacles that go against common practice and cultural mores. It is even more common, in my experience anyway, to be able to imagine or create solutions and scenarios outside the proverbial box we tend to use as a fortress against ‘change’. ‘Change’ meaning practices and strategies with which we are unfamiliar, that take one outside a known comfort zone, and cause internal strife. For these reasons...

1 comments

1:1 Learning For a long time, I had reservations about 1:1 projects but now I've come to believe that 1:1 can have significant positive impacts - why? For a long time, I had reservations about one to one projects. It seemed to be yet another approach to learning which leaned heavily on supply, with an expectation that wonderful things would happen when devices were supplied to schools and classes. Of course, there are some who have known better for a long time, and have learned from and wisely developed their approach to 1:1 projects. My epiphany came during a two day meeting with teachers associated with EUSchoolNET's iTEC project. There we ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning We Needed to Talk about 21st Century Learning..so we did A special group of education professionals came together on the 21st January in the House of Lords to talk about learning in the 21st century. As well as UK delegates, they came from the USA, Canada and Brussels. Their backgrounds included academia, education, politics, business, the charity sector and the media. The objectives of the event were: • To forge an alliance between the One-to-One Institute in the USA and the e-Learning Foundation in the UK and other partners who share our vision • To ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Utilizing Social Media to Learn About Early US Elections At Korea International School United States history teacher Brad Evans has his students experiencing early US history in a unique way, through social media. Each of his four US history classes will be debating issues from early presidential elections, as if they were happening today. This means that the candidates (Washington, Jefferson, Burr, Hamilton, Adams, & Madison) will be actively using Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to attempt to win over voters. Each class has its own hash...

1 comments

1:1 Learning 1:1 Learning - When Have You “Arrived”? Whether your school is still planning 1:1 implementation or started when 1:1 was a “laptop program,” there is value in knowing what it means to “arrive” at success. What does “arrival” look like? How do we measure success? Conventional wisdom says 1:1 implementation requires a clearly stated rationale to support the time and money investments and to assist with program evaluation. One common reason for going 1:1 -- schools need to reflect the “real world outside of school” where technology is ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Imagine the Classroom of the Future We have all seen the ways in which tablets are transforming the education experience in classrooms across the world by enabling one-to-one computing, tailored learning, virtual group collaboration, digital skill building, mobile learning and many more changes in how our teachers teach, and how our children are learning. But one thing that hasn’t changed much over the past century, despite the rapid advancements in education, are classrooms themselves. We still see rows of desks lined up facing a...

0 comments

1:1 Learning Adaptive Learning: concept and questions In 1-to-1 classrooms, personalized activities are always rich environments for our students. In this environment, a new concept is in fashion: "Adaptive Learning". What do we know about it? Wikipedia defines Adaptive Learning as: _ “An educational method which uses computers as interactive teaching devices. Computers adapt the presentation of educational material according to students' learning needs, as indicated by their responses to questions and tasks”._ (1) Although the concept of ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Another perspective on 1-to-1 In mars, 250 teachers from around the world are getting together in Barcelona, Spain. We are named ”Expert educators” and were chosen from over 28000 applicants. We live in various countries with different ethnic backgrounds however we have share the same goal, to give our students the best possible education. However we have different prerequisites. In the western world, like Sweden, where I come from, schools are adopting 1-to-1 rapidly and it has been the signum of an attractive school. ...

3 comments

1:1 Learning Why 1:1 Programs in our Schools are Obsolete If you are considering a 1:1 program for your school, you may want to stop and reconsider. There are volumes written about the need to equip today's students with technology to ensure they have the tools necessary for success in the world today. For many schools, they look forward to the day when every student in the class has a computer. But I’m beginning to think this isn’t enough. First, a bit of background. I work with a team of exceptionally bright and passionate people who are not ...

2 comments

1:1 Learning Learning "About" vs. Learning "How" One of the biggest challenges in any 1:1 program is professional development strategy. Schools often struggle with maximising time in teaching teachers how to most effectively teach in a ubiquitous computing environment. PD in these situations often breaks down into two categories: "About" and "How." When learning "About," teachers are taught the pedagogic frames of being good educators in 1:1 classrooms. They learn about curriculum design, teaching methods, classroom management, student needs ...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Never to Late to Get It Right Just as it’s not too late to get your flu shot, it’s not too late to get ed tech implementation right. Time and again One-to-One Institute is called upon to help schools/districts re-set their programs to get on the right track. Many early adopters didn’t have twenty years of research and practice to guide their work. It is good news that ed leaders monitor progress and recognize the need to retool. It can be done. It is a wise decision. Today is a different story. There is much to guide ...

5 comments

1:1 Learning Making Room for Learning When I walk into a classroom, the first thing I notice is how the desks or tables are arranged. You can tell a lot about what types of teaching and learning happen in a classroom based on that one simple thing. Don’t get me wrong: there are great things happening in classrooms in which kids sit in rows. But there are more opportunities for collaboration, more conversations, and more chances for kids to feel like the work they are doing really matters when the classroom is arranged with that in ...

5 comments

1:1 Learning 1 : 1 is a real dream for classrooms Do you think with me as educators that contacting other classes to share ideas and discussing their material using useful tool as Skype and bring this discussion inside classes can achieve clear understanding and precious knowledge for students ? I think that students will benefit of two things: using modern technology as applying of 21st century skills. students will learn self confidence and wide participating with other communities inside classrooms. If you agree with me comment with " ...

6 comments

1:1 Learning 1-to-1 and Phones We're heard from many Partners-in-Learning members that 1-to-1 is a great idea but they lack to funds to implement it. One way may be to take advantages of student cell phones. There's a lot that can be done with cell phones along with polling, accepting work via phones, using free apps, and more on a device students may already have in their hands. For a good overviewof what is possible, I highly recommend a book written by one of our 1-to-1 bloggers entitled "Teaching Generation Text." Here's ...

3 comments

1:1 Learning Common Ground in the 1:1 World The inaugural International 1:1 Computing Conference last week in Atlanta drew participants from around the world. Alicia Banuelos, San Luis, Argentina, kicked of the event describing how she led the ‘constitutional right’ for students in San Luis to have Internet access. Her amazing true life story laid the groundwork for many tales of 1:1 challenges, successes, leaders and research. It was striking how the work has evolved and stories have changed over the course of a decade. True, the ...

6 comments

1:1 Learning Celebrating The International Day of Persons with Disabilities Technology for students with disabilities As the world mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, there is a great need to develop strategies to remove barriers to learning and participation for all children, including those with disabilities. Students with disabilities have the right to receive appropriate educational services that would enable them to have full equality of opportunity like normal. One of these services or opportunities is the use of technology ...

2 comments

1:1 Learning Five ways to save money when implementing the 1:1 program We welcome visits by public and private schools in Turkey who are interested in the 1:1 program, mainly for two reasons: we are happy to contribute to education, and this also gives us a chance to review our own program. Since we implemented the 1:1 program, representatives from several schools visited us. They asked questions and shared their concerns about the transition period, the technical infrastructure, the training of the teachers, and the student learning outcomes. They had one question...

5 comments

1:1 Learning 1-to-1 and BYOD on a Budget We're talking 1-to-1 and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)and some schools are onboard but some say - nice idea, we can't afford it. Here are a few ideas to help with this: Do you already have computers? Were you planning to replace them? Why not take the replacement money and little-by-little start purchasing digital devices that move around with your students? How about mobile phones? These can be amazing 1-to-1 vehicles. If your students have them - if your community has them - consider ...

2 comments

1:1 Learning A Field Trip to the Garbage Dump Imagine if your child came home from school with a permission slip to go on a field trip... ... to the garbage dump. "Um..." you say since you don't really understand "modern" education. So you read further. "We will be dropping your kids off at the front gate of the dump, with the objective of finding something of value buried in all the trash. There will be no adult supervision on this field trip". Would you sign? If you answered yes, then I will be contacting the local Children's Services...

9 comments

1:1 Learning Well Implemented 1:1=Student Achievement AND Revenue Positive Results Many industry sectors have automated and transformed practices/systems with technologies. Education has been slow to follow suit. One frequently cited reason for this delay is lack of funds. Schools just haven’t allocated the necessary initial capital to retool systems through robust technologies…including the systems of teaching and learning. Few research projects have looked at revenue positive results (increased tax revenues) that can be attributed to education technologies. Project RED ...

2 comments

1:1 Learning A New Day for 1:1 Last week I was honored to be a key speaker at the California Education Technology Professionals Association (CETPA) Pasadena conference. The session was full of interested, passionate educators seeking to advance or begin a 1:1 program. Brianne Ford, outgoing president of CETPA, arranged this session because of the high level of interest among her CA colleagues. The most impressive aspect for me is the number of educator administrators seeking to get 1:1 right. They want to follow the path to...

1 comments

1:1 Learning Flipped Classroom Model: reverse teaching Self-access is a hard learning model that needs certain amount of self-control and motivation. To help students to gain autonomy and entrepreneurship for learning success, can be a good way to start. Flipped Classroom is a model of blended learning in which students acquire new information online, usually by watching videos or reading at home, and do problem solving later in class, with teacher's help and personalized guidance. With one-to-one approaches, this reverse teaching can offer more ...

12 comments

1:1 Learning How can BYOD help developing inquiring minds? How can we encourage inquiring minds in an academic environment? BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) can be a useful tool to stimulate inquiry and encourage lifelong learning. Teaching is not just transferring what teachers know, but helping students inquire and learn what nobody knows yet. We can help them stimulate their curiosity by involving them in real collaborative investigations: - Ask them to search examples of different opinions, opposing or supporting ideas with arguments for defending ...

9 comments

1:1 Learning Stop the 1:1 Madness!! Stop the Madness of Blindly Dumping Technology into Classrooms Beyond the shiny tools, it takes courageous leadership and solid planning to provoke the deep meaningful change that we want for our students. Please, let’s get passed the useless debate about whether or not we should have technology in school. It must become the norm. No question. Kids are extremely plugged-in and engaged outside the classroom while increasingly, they’re tuning out in the classroom. If the purpose of education is ...

7 comments

1:1 Learning Come to the International 1:1 Computing Conference Sign up today while there are still openings. A wonderful event for early and long term engagers of 1:1 computing! file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/International%201to1%20Conference/Marketing/Email%20HTML%20Pushes/Program%20Announcement%20for%20Lynette%20Owens.html...

3 comments

1:1 Learning Arizona Leaders Work Toward 1:1 Last week ten Arizona school districts came together for the Southwest Leadership Summit. Teams of key district decision makers – superintendents, assistant superintendents, CIOs/CTOs, curriculum and instruction and finance officials, teacher leaders – spent two full days of beginning or expanding their plans for creating successful 1:1 environments. Intel and One-to-One Institute We got deep into the weeds on the significance of leadership for second order change, how to lead and create a ...

5 comments

Hot Topics

Narrow search clear

Search Hot Topics