The following links are recommended by Frances Bradburn if you want to learn more about the North Carolina New Schools Project's 1:1 Laptop Pilot and related initiatives:

•  The Friday Institute's 1:1 evaluation site.


• The web site of the North Carolina New Schools Project.


• The web site of the Golden LEAF Foundation, the non-profit charged with distributing NC's tobacco settlement money. GLF helps fund this and other 1:1 programs in the state.

Frances Bryant Bradburn directs North Carolina's 1:1 Laptop Pilot, a project of the North Carolina New Schools Project. In this capacity she has had the opportunity to work closely with teachers, principals, technology leaders and students who have taught her valuable lessons about the benefits and challenges of one-to-one learning. Here, excerpted from a longer document she has created, are some tips and suggestions for school and district leaders who are contemplating one-to-one implementations:

Planning
First and foremost, says Bradburn, it is important to allow plenty of time to plan. Six months to a year is a reasonable planning timeline, she says. Additional planning advice includes:

• Think infrastructure first!  Do not deploy computers until the building has reliable high-speed Internet access throughout the campus.

• Make sure technology personnel (building-level technology facilitator and technician) are hired and in place before any computers are ordered.

• Create a climate of buy-in at all levels of the project: central office, building-level teachers and administrators, parents and students, and the community.

• Temper expectations; results will not be immediate and may be hard to measure on standardized tests. Other improvements might be encouraging at first but level off over time.

• Recognize that learning to teach in a 1:1 environment takes time, energy, and commitment and not every teacher will embrace it initially.

• Plan to give every faculty member and administrator the same technology to allow for modeling and consistency.

• Focus on professional development and empowerment by giving teachers laptops several months before the students and providing professional development opportunities throughout the summer before a whole-school roll-out.

Infrastructure
As mentioned above, Bradburn feels that a robust high-speed wireless network must be in place before any one-to-one program can be deployed. When it comes to infrastructure, she also advises:

• Make sure you have wireless access in classroom trailers, the gym and cafeteria, and even the school parking lot if possible.  Students and teachers will use the 1:1 devices constantly, everywhere.  Be prepared!

• You will inevitably need more access points than you initially plan.  Consider at least a wireless boost in every classroom.

• To comply with CIPA, e-Rate, and other regulations and protect your network from viruses, route all Internet traffic through your servers, even when the devices are off-campus, and house student work on a secure server rather than relying on individual student flash drives.

• Consider core classroom equipment (interactive whiteboard, projector, digital camera, video camera, classroom response systems, and digital science equipment) as a primary part of your initial infrastructure.

• Include electrical upgrades a part of the infrastructure investment.  Ensure that all classrooms have adequate plugs for individual charging of batteries—or invest in a charging station/cart for each classroom.

Hardware
"One-to-one does not have to be laptops," says Bradburn, who suggests carefully considering which devices offer the best match to the goals of your initiative. Adoption seems to come more rapidly with tablets, she says, because many teachers still prefer to write and hand-writing mathematic equations and scientific notation is much faster/easier than typing. However, a major concern with tablets is durability, especially of the styluses and screen latches. In addition, Bradburn suggests the following:

• Consider purchasing at least 10% additional laptops to use as loaners and include these — as well as battery chargers, replacement batteries, and laptop bags — in your budget.

• Laptop screens are fragile and expensive; if print textbooks are still in widespread use in your schools, consider mandating separate laptop and book bags.

• Consider leasing computers, with each incoming class receiving the newly leased machines. At the end of the same students' graduating year, the machines are sent back to the company and a new lease (for the next incoming class) begins.

Personnel
Bradburn feels strongly that 1:1 "cannot be successful without strong leadership from the technology facilitator, the media coordinator, and especially the principal." Additional advice on this topic:

• In choosing the principals who will implement the 1:1 environment, look for individuals who are familiar and comfortable with the change process and shared decision-making, have a vision of what 1:1 learning can do for a school, and willingly model technology use.

• The North Carolina Educational Technology Plan (2007) recommends the following staffing ratios: 1 technology facilitator, 1 technology assistant and 1 media coordinator per thousand students and 1 technician for every 400 computers.

• Consider forming a student technology team to provide support and granting service learning credits or hours for service on the team. You might also want to hire students over the summer to help repair and re-image laptops.

Professional Development
Be careful not to overwhelm teachers during initial training, says Bradburn, who suggests offering PD in small doses, perhaps concentrating on a single resource or subtopic per session and sending teachers off to use that one resource in their classrooms.  She also advises:

• Professional development should be provided for all participating teachers and administrators, with offerings differentiated based on individuals' abilities, needs, and content area.

• Technology and media personnel should regularly survey staff for PD needs/requests and plan PD opportunities around the survey results. Along these same lines they should solicit and learn from evaluations of all PD sessions.

• Learning to teach in a 1:1 environment takes time.  Provide as many opportunities as possible — beyond existing daily planning periods — for teachers to carve out larger blocks of time for lesson planning and collaboration. 

• Assessment in a 1:1 learning environment is very different than in a traditional environment.  Common rubrics, crafted by teachers together over time, help everyone move into this new strategy for evaluating student work.

• Find various, differentiated, and frequent opportunities for teachers to learn about and articulate copyright and related concepts to students.

• Use the 1:1 technology to provide training and support for teachers, including virtual as well as face-to-face professional development.

• Include parents, students, and even the community in your professional development plan.

• Plan on teacher turn-over.  Provide opportunities for PD and support immediately before the school year starts and early in the school year.

District and School Policies
 "One of the greatest challenges," according to Bradburn, "is the dual responsibility of keeping students safe and enabling the use of educationally appropriate, digital resources." She recommends considering the following:

• While many school and district policies will have to be clarified and/or augmented, computer policies should reflect general school policies. For example, regular bullying and cyberbullying are similar and both should result in immediate, severe, and identical consequences.

• Insist that teachers learn how to monitor student use of computers and, if possible, allow teachers the privilege of unblocking appropriate websites immediately from their desks so that the teachable moment is not interrupted.

• Have an understanding with educators, school board members, and the community that your district and school AUPs are perpetual works-in-progress.  Revisit, and amend if necessary, at least once yearly.

• Make sure that everyone—students, teachers, administration, and parents—sign appropriate AUP documents after being provided appropriate training as to meaning and necessity. Re-emphasize this at the beginning of every school year for all concerned.

• Provide district-managed insurance policies for all computers, but consider asking students/parents to contribute a nominal amount toward the cost of that policy, with an alternative for families that cannot afford the fee.

The information above represents just a small fraction of the advice offered by Bradburn. Additional topics she addresses in her "Lessons Learned" document include:

• District and school procedures geared to 1:1 management;


• Resources worth considering;


• The logistics of public-private partnerships;


• Low-hanging fruit (or "Higher Test Scores May Not Be the Best Measure of Success").

Download the complete "Lessons Learned" document from the North Carolina New Schools Project web site.