1 to 1 laptop classroom

This next semester, I have the opportunity to have a 1 to 1 laptop classroom. It is only for 1 class period, as I am trying to encourage the purchase of more laptops to our school by showing their benefit.

I am looking for online programs & downloadable programs that would be advantageous in a classroom with all students on laptops at all times. One of my goals is to eliminate as much paper usage in the classroom as possible.

Some programs that I am already aware of to implement:
1. Voicethread for uploading my PowerPoints & other video needs (along with Google video)
2. Angel- an online classroom site with the ability to upload most things, discussion, assessment, etc.
3. Adobe Acrobat Pro- to have interactive worksheets for students to fill out and send to me electronically
4. And I know of a variety of other sites mentioned in other posts that can be used for specific assignments such as Wordle

I am appreciative of any help that can be offered. The possibilities are really exciting to me!

Tags: 1 to 1, software

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Permalink Reply by David Kampmann on January 11, 2009 at 9:43am

Oh, sorry for the confusion. It is just on my computer. The students are using Preview or Acrobat Reader.

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Permalink Reply by David Kampmann on January 10, 2009 at 9:36am

World History for high school.

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Permalink Reply by Roland O'Daniel on January 10, 2009 at 9:22am

David,
Thanks for starting this conversation. In my experiences in working with teachers in 1 to 1 laptop environments, it's not necessarily the software that is the issue, but understanding how to change my instruction to make the laptops valuable. If I continue to lecture, take notes, and ask the students to fill out worksheets then the laptop is not adding value to my classroom, and in fact can get in the way. However if I can think about how I can have students creating maps that identify important aspects of battles in the civil war and annotate those battles using some mapping software then I'm adding value to the class. Or if I think about having students create graphs of data, using fooplot, capture that graph and post it into a wiki page so I can discuss the linear attributes of this data, create a linear regression model and use that model for making predictions then I am using the tool for adding value.
I guess what I'm trying to say is what would you like students to be doing with the laptops in your classroom is a better place to start than what tools are available. There are lots of great lists of tools out there and here are a few in my bookmark list: www.go2web20.net , thwt.org, cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com, 100-awesome-classroom-videos-to-learn-new-teaching-techniques/, My 100 favourite resources (articles postings, PDFs, presentations,.... Some are lists of tools and others are just discussions of using web 2.0 apps.

I like Terry'sresponse, he is showing how he wants to use the computers which is incredibly valuable. I'm going to point you to a colleague who integrates technology into her classroom as well as any teacher I've ever had the pleasure of working with Angela Cunningham and her class Ning. She doesn't have a 1:1 school, but if she did WATCH OUT.

Anyway, I think it's a great idea to push for more connectedness in classrooms, but if you want to really convince administrators to spend the money (especially in these hard economic times) then you need to show them the value that these computers add to student learning. If the students get involved your sales job will be a lot easier, because if they are engaged, they will spread the word and that means parents will support your argument. In these times of highly accountable testing, the computers have to impact test scores. Anyway, thanks for sharing and I look forward to more discussion.

Roland

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Permalink Reply by David Kampmann on January 10, 2009 at 5:30pm

Thanks Roland for the resources. I agree that to show value, using the laptops has to replace and improve what the classroom used before. There are so many things that I could use, I will probably spend a lot of my time sorting through them all.