By Erin Reilly on September 17, 2010 12:51 PM
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Matt Levinson recently released his book,
From Fear to Facebook: One School's Journey. I had a chance to interview Matt on his journey of moving from New Jersey to California in 2007 to start a 1-to-1 laptop program at the Nueva School.
This book is a must-read for any school grappling with the questions of
what it means to meaningfully support teaching and learning with
technology. Matt shares the promises and perils that he and the Nueva Community faced as they integrated a laptop program. It is an interesting, holistic road map that takes into account each stakeholders position whether it was the teachers to the parents to the students.
Let's begin with expectations... When you started the 1-to-1 laptop program at the Nueva School, what were your goals for the initiative and how did they play out?I had just moved to Northern California from New Jersey in 2007 at the start of the laptop program, and approached the rollout with confidence that the community, which is made up of tech-savvy teachers and parents in Silicon Valley, would handle the transition smoothly. Even though most families had home computers and were technologically sophisticated, and the teachers had lived with laptop carts for several years, none of us were prepared for the culture clash that occurred between kids and adults. Parents and teachers felt overwhelmed by the laptops initially, and we all struggled to figure out how to map out acceptable boundaries, set limits, and also seize on opportunities to enhance teaching and learning with technology.
From Fear to Facebook shares many of the challenges the Nueva Community overcame when implementing the one-to-one laptop program, but now that it is underway, what are new promises and challenges with the program?
We are now entering year 4 of the laptop program and progressing in our use of technology. Teachers are more confident now and create curriculum with technology at the forefront of their thinking. The school culture has also been established with buy in from all stakeholders. We are still taking steps to build a more powerful participatory culture with the use of blogs and wikis, discussion forums, and digital portfolios. We are running programming and podcasting classes, and further integrating curriculum across multiple disciplines. The challenge is how to leverage new opportunities with new tools - flip video cameras, iPads (a few teachers have the now and are beginning to think of ways to implement curriculum with iPads).
