Room With A View

This year all teachers at my school received laptops. That’s not so earth shattering but it is a step in the right direction. It hasn’t been without controversy but generally I think things are going okay.

The reason for giving teachers laptops was to improve their tech skills with the result that they will integrate more technology into their teaching. I hope it will be successful but I’m concerned that the potential is being limited by laptops that are locked down.Teachers cannot customize them in any way. They can’t add software or configure them to work the way they think. Even something as simple as adding Google Notebook to I.E. is not possible.

I understand why the IT folks have done this. They are concerned about security. They want to keep everything working. I understand this yet, I don’t think we’ll achieve the full potential for learning if teachers can’t customize their machines. Unless teachers can customize and make the machines theirs, I don’t think we’ll see the gains that people are hoping for.