You would have thought that, 17 months after my last post, a lot must have happened: 1 to 1 would be here, for example. But that is not the case. 1 to 1 isn't here, though we have a definite date more than a year hence. To recap: September 2013 was originally the date at which students would all be required to come to school with a 'device'. The teachers would not get a device, or rather, they would continue with desktops. And there was no justification for Why?
That was the plan, no other details. It has been a good move to push it back a year, even two. Where we are now might be called Year Minus One. In 2015, a year from now, three year groups, grades 6 to 8, will be required to bring a laptop to every lesson (either Mac or Windows). About one year earlier, the teachers of these students will receive a laptop - these will all be the same, and probably Windows. In the 2016-17 school year, the rest of the students (the older ones) will be obliged to have a laptop. Possibly, by then, many will have brought them in before the deadline. The second phase of teachers machines will happen one year before (in Year Zero, to continue the terminology).
It's a plan, as they say. Why it has this particular shape is complicated: the phased introduction is budgetary in respect of the teachers' machines; it also has a justification in terms of being able to focus PD and resources. Secondly, the phasing begins with the Middle School students. For many, this is not the intuitive decision, perhaps because secondary schools tend to design programmes from the endpoint backwards: what does the university entrant need? and deduce the earlier years pedagogy from there. Starting 1 to 1 in the MS, however, is a greater investment since the students will be staying longer at the school. Also, in theory, the stakes for teachers who wish to innovate are less high, so their willingness to experiment should be greater. Being, in theory at least, less beholden to content, the Middle School has space to try things out. Conversely, the relatively change-averse Upper School teachers will have longer to get their heads around the new landscape.
The students' computers will be 'platform agnostic'. Why? In truth, this is because the school is squeamish about requiring something too specific and had already started using the phrase BYOD back in 2012 (without knowing what it implied). I think, though, we can see this as an advantage, so long as we can also put in some constraints. Allowing either Apple or Microsoft should force more content into the cloud to enable students to access resources using their browsers. It should encourage teachers to think in terms of project-based learning rather than program-specific activities. We will, however, stipulate some technical requirements: laptops with particular specs and programs.
So given the agnostic argument, why would the teachers not also have a choice? The reasons for this are several: for the institution, it is much more efficient to buy, set up, train for, support one machine. Furthermore, even limited choice can be dangerous. Some staff can be expected to later regret the impulse choices they make and then we would have to deal with their dissatisfaction. Better not to go there.
So there we are. Many details will follow, some may even change due to force majeure, and I may have forgotten to mention some.
It has been quite a journey to get this far, to have administrative agreement and to have communicated the broad plan to staff. We have even started to soften up the teaches for the main assault with some PD. But totally missing so far are several things: an announcement to the parents; a detailed plan for the introduction; and a strategy and budget to prepare the school for the change. None of these will emerge painlessly from this particular institution, so I feel a responsibility, from the bottom up, to set these things in train.
Watch this space, hopefully more frequently than every year or so.
