1-1 Programs – What about home use?
One of the main benefits of 1-1 computing is to provide students with the same access to the resources outside of school that they have in school. This access seems to be twofold – both for schoolwork (assigned projects and homework) and for independent constructive use (research, learning applications independently, outside projects, etc). For middle school students, this benefit of 1-1 is especially significant. Students in these grades don’t drive and rarely have jobs. Although many have extra-curricular activities/interests, they’re becoming more independent and are usually earning increased trust/autonomy by parental units (as my students tend to call them).
I’ve been told frequently that “We can’t support home networks, printing, wireless, or other non-school technology.” Yet we often expect or at least encourage kids in 1-1 programs to access the Internet, print their homework, access school networks from home, and use home hardware (cameras, hard drives, scanners) for school projects. The tech-support side of me gets the reasoning behind this. After all, I’m not going home with the kids and helping them connect to their home hardware. Then I hear the parent/teacher side (increasingly more dominant of the many voices in my head) saying that it’s not fair to kids to require/expect something without providing some structure for support.
Over the years, I’ve broken the “no non-school tech support” rule countless times for students, parents, and teachers, but I’ve learned to be careful to give generalized instruction and never promise to come home and fix anything. What’s worked for me – generic cheatsheets for parents, helping download drivers (w/notes for what to try at home), occasional parent phone calls and referring parents/students to online resources like Atomic Learning.
Today I Tweeted for info from my PLC.
- @chamada suggested having the techier kids do service learning by helping peers at their homes. This already happens informally. I often hear from kids that “Johnny” came over the other night to help me set up _________. Unfortunately, this has been counterproductive at times as sometimes misguided kids install things they shouldn’t or trust kids who seem to know their stuff. Nice solution, but it would be more effective if it involved a GenYes-like structure behind it.
- @rmeyners mentioned providing VPN for home support, Google Docs offline for those w/o Internet at home, and having a Moodle forum for help in their 1-1 netbook implementation.
- @demetri shared a site created by his school with student technology FAQ, such as connecting to home printers, accessing home wireless networks, and using antivirus.
All three suggestions sound promising. I’m thinking about what combo above will be most useful for my students/families. I do know that the pat response that we can’t support outside use just doesn’t cut it. If we provide it, we should support it.
What does your school do? What support would you expect a 1-1 laptop program to provide students/families once they leave campus? I’d love to hear your ideas/suggestions.
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Comments
Tami, You raise an excellent point that I had not thought about. I’m a big fan of netbooks for 1:1 computing, but those of our students who would receive the most benefit from receiving a netbook for home use are also likely those students with the least in-house tech support.
It sounds as if you have come up with a workable solution for your situation. And the suggestions you shared from Twitter are wonderful.
Hello Tami,
You raise a difficult question. In our ’1 to 1′ netbook trial in Victoria, Australia, we haven’t offered technical support outside of school. However, we have encouraged students to connect their laptops to home networks, wireless, printers etc. Some schools have provided cheat sheets like you mentioned and also helped students install software like proxy-pal. Students are ‘administrators’ on their netbooks, we want them to take ownership and responsilbility for the netbook and install the software they want to use (legally of course!).
This has given rise to a few issues with mis-configuration and inappropriate software but on the whole, it has been worth it.