Kyle Berger, executive director of technology for the Alvarado Independent School District (AISD) in Texas, is particularly proud of the middle grade one-to-one program he helped implement because it "shows the district values technology in the classroom and so many people came together to make it happen."

Based on research that "indicates that students who have access to technology on a regular basis show a significant improvement in their learning skills over students who do not have regular access," AISD issues laptops to all of its students in grades 4-8. The fourth, fifth and sixth graders have use of the device solely at school, while students in grades 7-8 take the devices home with them every day.

Will AISD's older grades follow suit? That depends, in part, on what happens with funding. Like so many other districts, AISD is considering the pros and cons of a "bring your own device" (BYOD) to address district-wide budget cuts.

"We are currently looking at the BYOD game plan for our district," says Berger. "With us already having a large 1:1 deployment in grades 4-8, the need for 1:1 computing at other levels is apparent. Our overall thinking goes to us standardizing on district-owned devices in the lower grade levels (possibly up to 8th grade); at that point we want to let the technology become more personal to the user but also beneficial in the education as well. So BYOD is targeted to our high school students. We are looking at pilot rollouts within the next nine months for phase one."

That being said, the district is taking a cautious approach to the student-owned technology. One challenge with BYOD, according to Berger, is "the potential classroom difficulty with a mixed population of devices to teach to and the impact on instruction. Mainly we want to insure that the tools are not a distraction in our educational environment." In addition, he is concerned about how to handle equity issues and make sure that it doesn't turn into a "have-and-have-not situation" of the sort that the school- issued one-to-one program avoids.

Similarly, Alvarado ISD is feeling its way cautiously in the social networking arena.

Berger explains: "At this point, Facebook/MySpace is limited internally for students. We are constantly evaluating these tools but moving a bit slower on those sites due to increase in cyberbullying. However, the district and campus locations do have a presence on Facebook and use it often to communicate. Outside of these two sites we are open to other Web 2.0 tools like blogging and podcasting for students and teachers."

Sources: SchoolCIO.com and the Alvarado ISD web site