Four laptops in a classroom - help me use them effectively?

In the technology shuffle in my school, I was fortunate to receive 4 network capable laptops right before the holiday break. I would like to use these daily, and I'm not sure how to go about it. My average class size is 24-26 students.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on January 8, 2009 at 9:31am

How old are your kids? What do you teach? It would make it easier to make suggestions if we knew that.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Heiser on January 8, 2009 at 11:14am

Here is a website for you:

http://www.thinfinity.org

This search engine has a number of great resources for educators (lesson plans, etc..). When looking at the lesson I would think about how you can do these in a low tech environment. It might be setting up the laptops to be used as stations. I would personally concentrate on emphasizing higher order thinking skills and show how the tech can be used as a tool. Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Mendy Gannon on January 8, 2009 at 12:52pm

oops, sorry

I teach Sixth Grade Ancient Civilizations, so my kids are roughly 12.

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Permalink Reply by Mendy Gannon on January 8, 2009 at 12:54pm

I'm concerned about issues of fairness/access, and time - I'd like to rotate the children through on a regular basis. So, I think a webquest would be out - not enough time, but maybe a 15-20 minute web activity that I could rotate them through in a two week period?

I'd like to see them in use daily.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on January 8, 2009 at 5:22pm

Did I do the math correctly? With 24 kids working in pairs they could spend the entire class period working on a computer every 4th day----the use of the machine should be based on need not fairness, the kids with the best proposals for use get to use them. (This of course dovetails with my feeling about teachers and computers, too)