A bring-your-own-laptop pilot program puts an Ohio district closer to its goal of getting a computer into the hands of each of its students.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
Cary Harrod is clearly not one to give up easily. It took the instructional technologist three proposals to the Forest Hills Local Schools board in Ohio before it agreed to her plan for a pilot program that would give mobile computing access to almost every student in the 7,800-student district.
It's not as if the foundation for the program wasn't there. The board had always been supportive of a 1-to-1 program, but it simply did not have the resources to buy every student a computer. What's more, Harrod had spent the previous four years getting the teachers in the district comfortable with technology and the use of mobile devices in their classrooms. The district had some laptops available, but only enough for about one out of every five students. So, when a teacher wanted to integrate technology into a lesson, the machines had to be reserved, rolled into the classroom, and set up for the kids; or media center access had to be scheduled and the class moved there for the session.
That's hardly "authentic," says Harrod. "We were putting these devices into the hands of teachers who were starting to re-envision what they could do. But then they'd go back to the classroom and they'd have to wait until next Tuesday to check the cart out. If we didn't look for ways to increase access, the potential to lose the teachers would grow."
Finally, though, Harrod came up with the right formula that would move the all-computers-all-the-time dream off her wish list and into reality: BYOL, or bring your own laptop. With the school board's approval, the BYOL program officially began in January with an initial class of 567 seventh-graders. But there was a lot of work that had to be done before that.
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