West Deptford Teachers Presenting at International Laptop Conference

Four years ago, teachers Melissa Thurston and Jill Scheetz and technology director Tom Tucci headed down to Memphis, TN, for the annual Lausanne Laptop Institute conference, an international event focusing on one-to-one laptop use by students.

They were there at the dawn of West Deptford’s own one-to-one laptop initiative, which puts a laptop in the hands of every student at the middle school in an effort to blend technology and learning.

“We were participants just trying to figure out if we were headed in the right direction,” Thurston said.

Now they’re headed back–this time as presenters at this year’s conference in July, which will draw hundreds of educators from more than 30 countries.

To get there, though, they’ve had to navigate the world of wikis and blogs, discussion forums and chat programs.

West Deptford’s one-to-one program, which got its start by shifting funding away from traditional textbooks and desktop computers, has quickly shifted how things work in the classroom.

Reading a novel?

How about a podcast, instead?

It gives students who need that extra reinforcement a chance to listen and follow along, Thurston said, and puts them on par with their peers.

“It’s fun, because we can get guest readers,” she said. They’ve used everyone from other teachers to relatives in an effort to keep things interesting.

It’s changed how teachers operate, too–it’s meant the death of the red pen, and that might not be a bad thing, Tucci said.

“We don’t have to print out that 10-page paper on the Civil War–we can email it,” he said.

From there, teachers can use audio programs like Audacity to record comments on students’ papers, without ever having to print out and mark up papers, then schedule a conference with each student afterward.

“(Teachers and students) don’t have to be on the same timeline any more,” Tucci said.

The laptops also allow for more flexibility than a textbook ever could.

“You get to teach on the fly,” Thurston said.

She and Scheetz talked about teaching Rudyard Kipling’s short story “Rikki Tikki Tavi,” about a mongoose who has to battle a pair of cobras–two animals which are unfamiliar to most students.

“We looked up a mongoose–boom, it’s up there on the screen,” Scheetz said.

The benefits for students are immediately apparent, Scheetz and Thurston said. Children who might be classified as low-level learners are frequently able to jump in the middle of a project and direct their classmates on how to cobble together video clips into a finished movie.

“They’re shining,” Scheetz said.

That goes hand-in-hand with their presentation: Scheetz and Thurston will speak about using laptops to reach different levels of learners within a class, from the most brilliant students to learning-disabled.

It’s an area they have a lot of experience; Scheetz actually kicked off the laptop program in her self-contained special education classroom, and though there were concerns about launching it at that level, the results were unexpectedly good.

“Jill’s class was probably the one we saw the highest results, as far as how well the kids took off with it,” Tucci said.

Scheetz said it didn’t take a lot–just simple things like color-coding links to groups of students–to get her class on board.

“You don’t even see they have a disability,” she said. “It was awesome.”

Besides their presentations, the trio will take part in other sessions, including networking with other schools–some which are just starting out with one-to-one, to veteran school districts that have tackled every imaginable aspect of a one-to-one program.

And some of it will go beyond technological hurdles and strike out to things like the sustainability of a one-to-one technology program over the long term.

“There are times when you think, ‘What else can I do?’” Scheetz said.

Tucci said he’s looking forward to picking the brains of more experienced educators on as many fronts as possible.

“I guarantee you we’ll find answers to issues we don’t even know about,” he said.