Is it really just about developing technology skills? My state legislator serves on the Education Committee.  He is also a family friend; our children are involved in some of the same activities at school and we had known each other for some time.  During one of the times that the legislature was struggling with the possibility of moving the laptop initiative into the high schools, we ran into each other at the grocery store one Saturday. We stopped to talk about MLTI: me to lobby for extending the projects into the high schools, and him to share his concerns about doing so.  At one point he asked, “What about the fact that high school students will have had the laptops for two years and will have already learned how to use them?  They won’t need them in the high schools.” There is no doubt that we want students to develop technology skills.  Clearly being technology savvy will help our students get jobs.  Even the original rationale for MLTI was economic development; eventually attracting businesses to Maine because of our technologically skilled work force.  But my friend and legislator had completely missed the point about educational technology.  The most important thing the laptop initiative was doing for our students wasn’t teaching how to use a computer, but providing rich tools that enhance, extend, and improve the learning of math, science, social studies, language arts, music, healthy, art, and other subjects.  These are the modern tools for intellectual work and learning is the most important intellectual work for our youth. The most powerful piece of a learning with laptop initiative is the pedagogical opportunities it provides teachers.  E-communication, digital storytelling, WebQuests, digital content and tools, and inquiry and information skills all allow teachers to get students dealing with high quality content in thoughtful and interactive ways - ways that match the digital kids these students are outside of school.

The 1-to-1 Advocate 1-to-1 Evaluation MLLS Home MLTI MLLS Research Briefs         The Maine Learning with Laptop Studies is a project of the Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning in collaboration with The Institute for the Integration of Technology Into Teaching and Learning   Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning University of Maine at Farmington 252 Main St. Farmington, ME 04938 http://www.mcmel.org Mike Muir, Director mmuir@maine.edu 207-778-7179 Inservice Available   The Institute for the Integration of Technology Into Teaching and Learning University of North Texas Matthews Hall Rm. 316 1300 Highland Ave. Denton, TX 76203 http://www.iittl.unt.edu/ Gerald Knezek, Director gknezek@gmail.com 940-565-2057 Rhonda Christensen, Associate Director rhonda.christensen@gmail.com Created by Mike Muir Last updated: April 12, 2005