by Jim Rosso

In the first three months of 2010, The Journal of Technology Learning and Assessment published a series of articles devoted to one-to-one computing in U.S. schools. The first article ("Educational Outcomes and Research from 1:1 Computing Settings") introduces the intent of the series; the next four are empirical studies of 1:1 computing programs in different parts of the country; and the final, summative article ("The end of the Techno-Critique: the Naked Truth about 1:1 Laptop Initiatives and Educational Change") ponders the nature, status and future of 1:1 computing in K-12 schools.

The four papers that report on empirical programs represent a variety of programs including: high-need middle schools in Texas, fourth grade English Language Arts classes in a suburban California school, high school science classes in three different high-tech schools, and a middle-school wireless initiative in Massachusetts.

In "Educational Outcomes and Research from 1:1 Computing Settings" Damian Bebell and Laura M. O'Dwyer examine all four empirical studies and conclude that they provide clear evidence that 1:1 computing programs in K-12 schools have produced: increased student and teacher technology use; increased student engagement level; and modest increases in student achievement.

More specifically, they draw conclusions in four areas:

• Viability of the Technology Immersion plan: The authors conclude that it can work if done right and that a key to success is ensuring that students have computers outside of school as well as in the classroom.


• Assessment: They conclude that more research is needed about the relationship between laptops and standardized tests and raise questions about whether the current tests measure what students actually learn from 1:1.


• Impact on Teachers: They observe that 1:1 implementations challenge traditional teaching approaches and find that professional development geared especially to teaching in the 1:1 classroom is very helpful.


• Impact on Students: Finally, Bebell and O'Dwyer conclude that students not only became more engaged with school but became better researchers, have access to an "expanded" classroom, and benefit from "systematic and ubiquitous use of technology, as opposed to idiosyncratic and sporadic use of technology" (Weston, Bain).

What follows is a quick look at each of the four empirical studies and the summative article that accompanies them.

The Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative (BWLI) was a pilot program that provided 1:1 technology access to all students and teachers across five public and private middle schools in western Massachusetts. The implementation and the outcomes were varied through the five sites of this program. This study looks at results that were fairly universal through the five sites.

Within months of the initial student implementation, the researchers found that teacher and student use of technology increased dramatically across the curriculum in nearly all of the participating classrooms. However, the most important factor in the success of a 1:1 computing program, they conclude, is still the individual teacher.

Other findings included:

• The program resulted in fundamental shifts in teaching—particularly teaching strategies, curriculum delivery, and classroom management. Without question, the 1:1 program had major impacts across many aspects of teaching for the majority of teacher participants.


• Evidence exists that student engagement increased dramatically in response to the enhanced educational access and opportunities afforded by 1:1 computing through the pilot program.


• Data also show that student research skills and collaboration were enhanced by the improved educational access and opportunities afforded by the 1:1 pilot program.


• After three years of 1:1 implementation there was evidence that student achievement had been positively enhanced through the types of educational access and opportunities afforded by the 1:1 pilot program. These included:


• Teachers and school leadership attitudes and beliefs concerning the impact of 1:1 computing on their students' academic achievement;


• Achievement trends in schools' overall Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) performance over time compared to comparison schools and state trends;


• The results of a computer-writing study in which BWLI seventh grade students completed an extended writing exercise with and without technology.

This study looks at three small high schools, two public and one private, that have had a 1:1 computing wireless environment in their science classrooms for a number of years, and examines how that computing environment has affected the schools. To quote from the abstract, "While some positive effects are clearly seen in these classrooms, five years or more into the innovation, problems remain, and school cultural factors seem to play an important role in teacher uptake and integration of technology."

By looking at "experienced high-technology schools" the research is seeking to avoid the initial phase of implementation—the first one to three years, which are often dedicated to learning the technology and not necessarily to working on changing instruction. The three schools are quite different. One is a public urban school with 300 students in a racially and economically diverse neighborhood where 64% of the students are from low-income families. All classes have digital white boards and all students get laptops but cannot take them home. The school's goal for technology is to empower students through technological expertise.

The second high school is a rural public high school that serves 419 students, 98% white, with a low median income. The facility has wireless Internet access throughout. and each classroom has a 'tower' of 14 laptops—often enough for 1:1 use. Their goal for technology is planning for the ubiquitous environment, increased accountability, transparency for teachers and students, meeting academic standards, and impacts on classroom instruction.

The third school is a private academy serving 360 students, 80 percent of whom board. The facility is not wireless but has 3,000 Ethernet drops. The academy's pedagogical and technology vision is shaped by the fact that 20% of the students have special needs. As part of a commitment to mastery and differentiated instruction, the school's curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, and administration integrate the technology available.

The researchers in this study took a hard look at both the benefits and the challenges of ubiquitous technology implementation in high school science classrooms. Their findings included:

• Several persistent or emergent problems affect the uptake and use of the technology by teachers for science instruction. These include: continued technical problems, the time needed to find and evaluate resources and to learn to use the new tools, student attitudes towards technology and the Web, and school cultural issues.


• A 1:1 environment relies not only on the availability of laptops but on the availability of the web.


• In a 1:1 environment the teacher has to decide when to work with the class as a whole, or to work with subgroups, or individual students. At times, "the 1:1 computer ratio is in tension with" the concept of collaborative learning embraced by many educators.


• The entire school culture needs to support innovation and teaching.


• Even when this is the case, the use of technology in the classroom is shaped by the teacher's individual style and understanding of how science education should be conducted. In general each school's "definitions and goals were trumped by individual teachers' pedagogical stances. Inquiry-oriented teachers deployed the technology to support and expand inquiry; more traditional teachers likewise used the technology according to their values, in conducting a teacher-centered classroom."


• The implementation of the ubiquitous computing environment has had the important effect of encouraging the use of computer-based tools such as Excel. "Even in these three schools, however, which have worked to develop a high degree of technology integration," the study concludes, "the use of a data analysis tool like Excel or LoggerPro was more experimental and less seamlessly a part of teaching and learning."


• The Web offers an abundance of photographs, video, simulations and animations that teachers and students found helpful. Yet because these are all representations of phenomena, they challenge the teacher with sometimes conflicting options.


• Professional development is more important than ever. Technology makes teacher collaboration and ongoing, in-context professional development essential, as everything changes continually. Teachers never get to the point where they have acquired all the skills they need; only to the point where they find it easier to acquire new skills. Teachers in all study schools expressed a desire for more time to work together to solve the many puzzles their profession sets before them.


• Districts or schools implementing the ubiquitous computing environment require both patience and structured persistence if they wish to transform the science curriculum.

The Technology Immersion Pilot (TIP), created by the Texas Legislature in 2003, and administered by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) worked from the idea (demonstrated by some foreign language schools) that Texas public schools could learn to use technology more effectively by 'immersing' the schools in technology rather than "by introducing technology resources in a cyclical fashion over time." TEA has invested more than $20 million in Federal Title II, Part D monies to fund Technology Immersion projects at high-need middle schools through a competitive grant process.

In 2004 middle schools responded to a Request for Application by TEA. Eligibility for Title II funds was required: high need due to poverty, schools in need of improvement, or schools in need of technology. Twenty one middle schools with Grades 6 to 8 students (treatment group) were drawn from rural, suburban, and urban locations across Texas. Another 21 schools with equivalent populations were selected as a control group for comparison purposes. The technology immersion model implemented at participating schools involved a laptop for each student and teacher, wireless Internet access, curricular and assessment resources, professional development, and technical and pedagogical support.

Research determined the extent to which each of the 21 treatment schools implemented the Technology Immersion model as designed, and assessed each school's progress across three implementation years. Additionally, given variations in implementation, the research investigated the relationship between implementation strength (at the school, teacher, and student levels) and students' reading and mathematics achievement as measured by scores on the state's criterion-referenced assessment—the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).

The TIP research has been summarized at the K-12 Computing Blueprint site. In The Journal of Technology Learning and Assessment article the results were summarized as follows:

• Technology Immersion can be implemented with fidelity.


• There was a strong association between student use of technology and students' improvement in the TAKS reading and mathematics scores.


• The strongest predictor of improved TAKS scores was the ability of students to use their laptops outside of school in the four core-subject areas and learning games.


• With commitment to the model's specifications (including students' personal access to laptops within and outside of school), the prospects for raising academic achievements are promising.


• Effective technology integration involves much more than just buying laptops for students.


• Technology Immersion requires a comprehensive approach that:


• transforms the school culture,


• changes the nature of teaching and learning,


• expands the educational boundaries of the school and classrooms

This study confirms that fundamental school change is difficult and requires a long term commitment at all levels of the school system including: board members, superintendent, principals, teachers, students, and parents.

Fourth-grade students have consistently shown a slowing in the process of reading as they transition from learning to read, to reading to learn. This slowdown has been termed the "fourth- grade slump." The study by Suhr, Hernandez, Grimes and Warschauer looks at utilizing a one-to-one laptop program to address this slump. It took place in an unnamed suburban school district located in southern California and compared changes in the English Language Arts (ELA) test scores of a group of students who entered a one-to-one laptop program in the fourth grade to a similar group of students in a traditional program in the same school district.

After two years' participation in the program, laptop students outperformed non-laptop students on the ELA total score and in the three subtests that correspond most closely to frequent laptop use: writing strategies, literary response and analysis, and reading comprehension. There were no significant differences in three of the other sub-test change scores (word analysis and vocabulary development, reading comprehension, and written and oral language conventions).

Interestingly, "ELA scores indicate that neither group experienced the fabled 'fourth-grade slump.' However, the non-laptop group experienced a slump in fifth grade, while the laptop group did not." In general, data analyses demonstrated that after the second year of the program the students using the laptop computers did significantly better than students who were not using the laptops. It is not surprising that the positive effects of the program came during the second year when teachers could spend more time on teaching with the computer and less time learning how to use the computers.

The researchers acknowledge that the sample size and study duration were on the small size, casting some doubt on its generalizability. "Nevertheless," they conclude, "the study adds to an emerging body of literature suggesting that laptop use over multiple years may have a small positive effect on literacy test score outcomes. Given that the tests themselves are taken on paper, thus potentially disadvantaging students who have done much of their learning via computer (for example, see Russell & Plati, 2002), the actual benefits vis-á-vis knowledge of the material covered on the tests may be understated for laptop students. It also may be the case, as advocates suggest, that much of what is best taught and learned with laptops is not covered on standardized tests at all. Finally, since the upper elementary grades have proven to be a critical turning point at which many students begin a downward trajectory in literacy and learning, even a small upward bump at this grade level could have an important long-term effect."

This concluding paper raises questions about what is necessary in a classroom and school to benefit from 1:1 computing. Weston and Bain conclude that the six characteristics of a successful program are:

• The school community—students, teachers, school leaders, and parents—has an explicit set of simple rules that defines what the community believes about teaching and learning.


• The school community deliberately and systematically uses its rules to embed its big ideas, values, aspirations, and commitments in the day-to-day actions and processes of the school (e.g., physical space, classroom organization, equipment, job description, career paths, salary scales, curriculum, classroom practice, performance evaluation, etc.)


• The whole school community is fully engaged with creating, adapting, and sustaining the embedded design of the school.


• The embedded design generates feedback from all members of the school community.


• The interplay of rules, design, collaboration, and feedback make it possible for the school community to develop an explicit schema—a shared conceptual framework for practice—that defines interactions for the community members in their pursuit of learning.


• Guided by their use of their schema, community members demand systematic and ubiquitous use of technology, as opposed to idiosyncratic and sporadic use of technology described in the research on many 1:1 computing programs.

These six components help to form a learning community that can utilize all the contributions and knowledge of its members.