Connected classrooms: the Clovis High Laptop Program: technology integration in the classroom remains an elusive goal at many schools. However, technology is here to stay, and we have an obligation to prepare students for their world.

In 2002 the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency released a report confirming the value of using computer technologies in the classroom as an instructional tool. The report studied 2,000 students front 60 schools over three years and its conclusions are the most definitive yet to support the idea that teachers should integrate technology related materials (such as computers, media, internet, e-mail) into the classroom (www.becta.org.uk).

The study found that in classrooms where students used computer technologies frequently, students scored significantly better over time on assessments. For most educators in this country, the study's results will not come as a surprise. For the last decade public schools have been developing technology integration primarily by getting computers into the hands of students, a task not easily accomplished and fraught with problems.

The following story from one public high school illustrates what can be achieved when committed teachers, sufficient technology and willing students are put into a "wired classroom." It also underscores many issues and problems that have made meaningful technology integration in the classroom an elusive goal and one that requires constant monitoring and comprehensive planning by administrators.

There are 96 students currently enrolled in the Laptop Program at Clovis High School. The school has nearly 800 computers on its campus and teachers use them in a variety of ways, but the Laptop Program is special. Teachers have long complained that not having computers for every student limited their ability to create meaningful lessons for their students. So to get the one-to-one access between students and computers, the kind or-access the studies extol, a new Lap top Program was created.

The classes are open to freshman students who want an integrated computer experience with their academic core, standards-based classes. Students in the Laptop Program must enroll in biology, English 9 and either Algebra 1 or geometry (the standard freshman classes for most students in the district).

Students who choose the laptop option do not need typing skills or even a computer. The laptop classrooms all contain class sets of wireless laptop computers each student call use. This frees students from the burden of toting computers from room to room. Students are checked out a memory key (the size of a car key) they call plug into the computers they use in the classroom. In this way, they can take work from class to class or to their home without having to tote their own computer.

On a typical day students will do a variety of activities on the computer. When a student like Sheila enters Ms. Taylor's English class, she goes right to her seat and logs on to the teacher's web site using her own personal password. (Ms. Taylor uses www.aspire.com, a fee-based web site that call be accessed from any computer with Internet access).

Sheila reads the lesson plan for the day and notes any homework, which she copies and pastes to her memory key. The day's lesson may involve any standards-based language-arts activity for ninth grade, but any handouts a teacher might traditionally use are posted on the web site. Students might use the laptops to access analogy games, study vocabulary, read short stories, write essays, research via the Internet, or do projects. In addition to these activities, the computer also serves as a management tool.

What students say

The students like the class for a variety of reasons.

* "We call look at our grades whenever we are on the computer anywhere at aspire.com. At aspire we call also find our homework and stories, poems, and other important things we need to read or do."

* "In my English class I tend to write better on a computer because I can type faster. I don't have to worry about my handwriting, and it is easier to edit my text."

* "It teaches me how to write better: also it is just fun."

Ms. Taylor is more philosophical about what she is trying to do with her students. "Students don't think of this as a laptop class; they see it as a learning class. When they conic in they are ready to learn, and they don't have to wait for me. In this way, using computers makes students more independent."

When Sheila goes to math she will use the computer for different activities, in Algebra, Ms. Keeler usually gives her students quick notes to start (she uses a projection unit that is linked to her laptop) and then the students do an interactive PowerPoint or web site activity that corresponds to the lesson.

"The web activities I try to provide give kids a context for the math ideas I teach, and the sample problems or activities provide the immediate feedback that helps the kids to process the ideas. When we do math problems, kids will sometimes ask for help; I can usually refer them back to the web activity they did, and you can see the light go on."

Ms. Keeler puts many of her note explanations in PowerPoint presentations, which she burns on CD's in her classroom. This way, if students are absent she can just hand them a CD and let them take the lesson home. Small files are placed directly on her web site (visit the web site Alice uses with her class at www.alicekeeler.net).

If Sheila were in geometry she would most likely use the Geometer's Sketchpad program (www.keypress.com/sketchpad). As one student explained, "In my laptop math class we use a program called Geometer's Sketchpad that has about everything in geometry in it. It shows exactly what a line or ray is. You call find the measurements of angles, line segments and arcs: and no rulers, compasses, pencils or protractors are needed. Using the computer you can manipulate the geometry figures and find different angles. It really helps me to visualize and understand the things we are learning."

Mr. Dean, the teacher of this class, who teaches both laptop and non-laptop sections of geometry, believes his laptop kids have a much better comprehension of the geometry ideas he has taught because of-the use of laptops.

"The computer enhances learning by providing different ways to approach a topic. It also allows the students the chance to see and manipulate the geometry, they don't have to just take my word for it. They can see the difference between something that is always true and something that is sometimes true. This difference can be seen quickly and with little effort. A non-computer class not using the programs I use, would have to do several examples before finding the same thing."

In biology, Sheila uses the laptop computers in more traditional ways: for reading, taking notes, taking quizzes, and doing Internet searches. Ordinarily, Mr. Bitters starts his class oft with a quick writing prompt. Students are expected to do a quick Internet search to find information that they frame into a response.

"When students initially come into my class they don't seem to really understand that there is more to biology than what is in a book. I model for students all the places they can get information to supplement the book, and the kids learn more because of the expanded materials they have access to."

Students seem to agree with Mr. Bitters.

* "I love the fact that we can pull up the Internet and get up to date information about the subject; and since biology is changing much faster then math or English, this is an extremely valuable ability."

* "There are so many web sites dedicated to biology online that we could not say them all here. In my Biology class, we take hold of these resources and put them to good use."

* "We get to learn awesome stuff about life and biology."

In a December 2002 survey, the laptop students at Clovis High said the laptop classes were more rigorous than non-laptop classes. They said they enjoyed using the computers, and they are learning more than if they were in a non-laptop class. Students do use the computers frequently in the ways indicated by the BECTA (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) study, and teachers like the learning behaviors they see from their students. While the Laptop Program at Clovis High appears to be on the right track, it has taken the school a long time to get to where it is today.

How the program started

In the fall of 1995 district administrators began having serious discussions about how to provide exposure to computer technology to the students in the district. A forward-thinking school board had included a technology component as part of the graduation requirements, and now the administration needed to work out how "kids were to get access to computers to fulfill the requirement.

The cost of providing every student with a computer at that time was so exorbitant as to be impossible. So in the spring of 1996, the district (based on an Australian model) had a meeting with community members and developed the idea of entering a partnership.

If parents would buy a laptop their child could bring to school, the school agreed to work out a cost effective arrangement with a computer vendor (Toshiba for the first two years; subsequently IBM) to supply hardware, while the district would provide laptop classes at the schools, service for the computers, and training for the teachers. The district's partnership was innovative but also promised more than the district could initially provide.

In the fall of 1996 the first laptop classes were created at each of the district's middle schools for seventh graders. Students walked into classes that first week of school with new computers and high hopes, and almost instantly the problems (endemic of new programs) began. While the students were prepared, the schools were less so.

In 1996 laptops were bigger and not very powerful compared to today. Classrooms did not have the infrastructure to allow entire classes of students to get on the Internet with any regularity, if at all. None of the schools in the district had a full time, on site technician. There were not many resources on the web that could be used by teachers, and some teachers had no desire to develop lessons for students to use their laptops.

The teachers for those first classes had received training in the summer of 1996 in preparation for the classes, but training to do what? Teachers had different ideas as to what students should be expected to use the computers for. Did they teach computer skills to the students or ask students to use computers as they taught a content area?

Based on the technology expertise of the teachers, the answer varied, as did the types of things students were asked to do. This would become a problem each year as new teachers were asked to teach laptop classes. The program had a vision, but it was the teachers who taught the classes that shaped the assignments students were asked to do.

On a regular basis teachers were confronted with unexpected problems: student computers would not work, network technicians were unavailable, and network access was frequently down. The need for technology upgrades arose quickly, a problem that continues to plague budget minded educators. Very early it became clear that many of the students knew more about computing than the teachers did.

School sites had been given some computers by the district; small quantities for each class and loaner laptops for parents who could not afford to buy them. But even determining the proper configuration of how many computers should be in a classroom raised questions. Still, even with district support and with kids bringing their own computers, there always seemed to be more students in a class than there were computers.

Two years later the first class of laptop students entered Clovis High (1998-99) and the same problems surfaced all over again. Teachers who had agreed to be laptop teachers had different conceptions of what this entailed and the amount of preparation they would need to do to provide a quality class. Students who were veterans of the program came to the high school with considerably more skills than most of the teachers.

Unlike middle school, where teachers had expanded language arts block periods and more latitude about what to teach, high school teachers were constrained by the specifics of their curriculum and the short 55-minute periods.

At the end of the year the school offered a sophomore cluster of classes even as new freshman entered the program. The addition of classes outpaced the number of teachers truly committed to providing the instruction envisioned. Nonetheless, the school continued adding classes and by 2001 there were laptop sections of most core classes up through the 11th grade.

Yet in a survey conducted in 2001, in all but one class students claimed they used their computers approximately once a week. Students in the survey said they did not want to bring their laptops to school because it wasn't "cool" to have them, teachers weren't using them, and they felt computer literate.

Teachers replied in the survey that they did not plan lessons with the computers because kids did not bring them, the computers students brought frequently did not work, and the process of getting computers set up in classes that were only 55 minutes was not worth the time. In many cases teachers were just frustrated. They had not received all the training they needed and they had lost their enthusiasm to develop integrated lessons.

Starting over

By 2001, however, Clovis High was a very different place, with more technology resources and capabilities. To create a quality laptop program the school stepped back and started over. To combat student concerns, the school promised students they would not need to bring their own computers at all. The school would provide a class set of wireless laptops to teachers who would be committed to using the computers every day, not to teach technology, but to facilitate the instruction of standards-based curriculum.

Four teachers agreed to this commitment. The result of this effort is four months old and is documented above. The laptop teachers are going great guns, but the process has been slow and the time it has taken the teachers to create their "learning labs" using means of instruction vastly different than the norm has been long.

The story of Clovis High highlights many issues that schools investing in technology must continually face. In the last few years the school (using grant money), has invested heavily into technology, yet it is hard to quantify bow much the investment has paid off. Every staff member has network capabilities and their own computer. Teachers take attendance from their classroom computer, access student data and use e-mail and can access the Internet.

Management systems have changed and no one will deny the significance of this change; but what about the students? How should technology money be best spent to generate the learning benefit cited by the BECTA study? Do educators create labs to provide drill and skill computer programs for kids not mastering standards or who need to pass assessments like the High School Exit Exam? Should the money be spent to put a few computers in every class room or should they be concentrated in selected classrooms as they have in the Laptop Program?

Asking the right questions

Even the laptop students say their program is not for everyone. For some kids entering the program for the first time who do not have computer skills, the program can be overwhelming. Administrators who make technology decisions at their school sites must continually ask these questions and, considering the lessons from Clovis High, think about whether they have the right people, technology, software programs and support to pursue their school goals.

Technology is always changing and online resources are constantly being developed, so schools need to continually reassess how to spend their technology dollars. One thing is certain: We must learn from our technology mistakes because technology is here to stay. As Ms. Taylor says about her students, "This is their world. Ours was pencil and paper and theirs is about computers and the Internet. We have to teach students how to live in their world."

James Bushman is a learning director and researcher at Clovis High School. He can be reached at [e-mail].