Researchers at the University of Southern Maine have issued two new reports on the impact of the state's middle school laptop program on teaching and learning. One of the new reports focuses on raising mathematics achievement through intensive professional development for laptop integration. The second compares the benefits of a laptop science project with a more traditional project.

The Role of Sustained Professional Development in Technology Integration

Middle school mathematics teachers in 24 Maine schools participated in a two-year professional development program designed by the Center for Education Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation (CEPARE) at the University of Southern Maine. The program addressed both the teachers' content knowledge and instructional practices. Building on research that suggests that computer-based activities can support deeper conceptual understanding, it focused on significant laptop integration.

The program had its beginning in 2002, when more than three-fourths of Maine's 8th grade students to failed to meet the states standards as measured by the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA). Few achieved high proficiency. As the state examined the problem, another statistic appeared as a likely area for improvement—only about one-half of mathematics teachers reported using laptops in instruction, in contrast to 85 percent of teachers who used the technology in other subject areas.

Four goals guided the professional development:

• Content – deepen teachers' mathematical content knowledge in Maine's statewide learning standards.
• Pedagogy – improve teachers' pedagogical practice in technology-enhanced mathematics classrooms.
• Technology Integration – develop and apply strategies that support the integration of technology for the teaching, learning, and assessment of mathematics.
• Professional Learning Communities – engage teachers in meaningful interaction and dialogue about mathematics through face-to-face and online environments.

A randomized control trial (RCT) research design was used to measure the impact of the professional development program. Approximately 50 schools participated. After the schools were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, all 7th and 8th grade teachers and students were pretested. The experimental group then was immersed in the program, which provided teachers with 210 hours of professional development over the two years. This included 30 hours of face-to-face and 50 hours of online professional development each year. Participating teachers also received at least 24 additional hours per year of ongoing support via peer coaching, site visits, and an online forum and resources. Both the control and experimental groups completed posttests at the end.

The resulting report, Improving Mathematics Performance Using Laptop Technology, concluded that the professional development was effective in changing teaching and technology practices, which in turn led to improved student performance on standardized mathematics tests. Teachers in both the experimental and control groups had similar content knowledge at the beginning of the study and, yet, by the end of the two-year professional development program, teacher content knowledge had significantly increased for the experimental group of teachers. Teacher practice also changed, with those in the experimental group increasingly integrating laptops into their curriculum and instruction.

And the bottom line: student achievement increased. While both groups of students improved their mathematics knowledge over the course of the two years, students in the experimental group improved more. In particular, students in the experimental group significantly outperformed students in the control group on the two subsections of the state's standardized mathematics test dealing with Numbers and Operations and Patterns.

Hard Fun With Science

Using Laptops to Facilitate Middle School Science Learning used a much smaller test sample – two eighth grade classes at Bristol Consolidated School in Pemaquid, Maine – to look at the impact of laptops on science instruction. Both of the classes were taught by the same teacher. One class (the control group) was taught in the traditional manner and was asked to complete a traditional paper diagram and report as a final project. The other class (the experimental group) was also taught the material in the traditional manner; however, they had access to interactive, educational websites for their final project and were asked to turn in a narrated animation podcast. Specifically, the study was designed to answer the following question:

Is the use of the laptops to create narrated animations more effective than having students create traditional paper diagrams and reports in helping students learn the concepts related to Earth's axis angle?

Pre- and post-tests designed by CEPARE showed that those with the technology-rich project had greater comprehension, retention and engagement. Students described their laptop work as more challenging, time-consuming and fun. CEPARE measured engagement by classroom observation. The experimental group students consistently remained on?task – while working at school and at home – as compared to 70 percent of the control group students. The findings led CEPARE researchers to recall Seymour Papert's concept of "hard fun" – the idea that "everyone likes hard challenging things" that let them actively construct new knowledge.

Improving Mathematics Performance Using Laptop Technology and Using Laptops to Facilitate Middle School Science Learning are the second and third MLTI impact studies conducted by CEPARE. The first, Maine's Middle School Laptop Program: Creating Better Writers, demonstrated improvements in middle school writing skills attributable to the state's one-to-one program.