A new world of digital choices

NECC 2009 (the last NECC, since next year it will be ISTE 2010) was a fantastic conference for many reasons. For me, as in the past, the opportunities to have conversations with other educators striving to find new ways to engage students, connect professionally with peers, and utilize cutting edge digital tools to expand the teaching and learning process beyond the traditional walls of the classroom was definitely the highlight. Keynotes and sessions were thought provoking, but hallway and blogger’s cafe discussions were the best parts.

Over and over again, I had discussions which related to the issue of CONTROL in our schools. Whether it was a discussion about social media policies for schools, issues surrounding content filtering, or the need for visionary school leadership, control is the issue we kept getting back to.

It was wonderful to finally meet and chat with Howard Levin at NECC this year, who is the director of technology for the Urban School in San Francisco. His students have created over 100 hours of interview content in the wonderful website “Telling Their Stories,” and have been in the midst of a 1:1 laptop initiative for several years.

Howard’s school takes a radically different approach to the issue of control when it comes to student laptops. Where the vast majority of U.S. schools today attempt to LOCK DOWN desktops for students to prevent them from installing any new applications, at the Urban School students have administrative rights on their own Macbook laptops. As Howard explained in his session, “1:1 Laptops and Seamless Integration: Peek into the Frontier,” teachers at the Urban school have found some of the most creative, constructive and worthwhile programs students are using on their laptops have been DISCOVERED by students and then shared with the wider school community. If laptops had been locked down, these students would not have been able to utilize these programs or would have been “driven underground” as hackers.

I am often amazed how common it is to find schools embracing 1:1 initiatives whose leaders are opposed to student gaming. In many cases, a primary reason given for locking down student laptops (not granting admin access rights for new software installations) is to prevent students from installing and playing games during class. If students are choosing to play games in class instead of focusing on learning, that is an issue of classroom management, the instructional tasks provided to students, and/or student discipline. That is not an IT issue. Schools should not implement IT lock down processes simply because it is an easier way to deal with instructional or disciplinary issues.

We live in a day of vastly greater digital choices. Some of those choices can be constructive, some can be destructive. Some can be educational, some may be mindless. The point is we need to equip teachers as well as students to function effectively in this new world of digital choice.

Please do not misunderstand me: I am 100% supportive of basic content filtering in both schools and homes. In part, I started the project “Unmasking the Digital Truth” not to advocate for digital chaos in our classrooms and homes, but rather to reveal the desire to CONTROL rather than comply with the letter of U.S. law which frequently drives computer-related policies in our schools.

In the end, perhaps issues of laptop lockdown come down to these questions. How much do you trust students? How focused are you as a school organization in striving to equip students to make good digital as well as face-to-face choices in our new landscape of learning? Every school implementing a 1:1 initiative needs to provide a fast, quick way to re-image student and teacher laptops when a software glitch has fouled up the system. Increasingly, we need to do our computing in the cloud. I am fully aware that students push boundaries and limits, and we need to still provide as well as enforce those for our students. Completely locking students out of the opportunity to install new software on their computers, however, communicates a lack of trust and a lack of partnership with students. It is essential that we partner with students in a digitally collaborative learning culture in schools, and that partnership begins with trust as well as responsibility. There should be individual consequences when a student violates trust or their responsibility. These consequences DO take more time to administer and navigate than a policy which simply blocks all new software installations. The long term benefits of a policy which trusts students, however, and recognizes the benefits they can bring to the learning community when they function as collaborative partners rather than learning drones to be controlled and managed, far outweigh any perceived short term benefits to a “lock down” laptop policy.

Similar Posts:

• Leadership and PD: Critical Keys for 1:1 Success
• Sub-$100 Netbooks are coming
• Social networking guidelines for athletes and schools
• Blogging the Conference: We’ve come a long way in 3 years!
• Raising Awareness About ISTE NETS

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