The best thing you can do for your 1:1 program

There are a lot of tips out there about how to implement a teacher and/or laptop program. Educating stakeholders, establishing time lines, setting up a WLAN...the list goes on. These things are good things, but there is one step a co-worker suggested that many schools brush over or even purposefully neglect. He believes--and I now agree--that a laptop program can rise or fall depending on this: a staff member dedicated to 1:1.

From a personnel perspective, many schools mistakenly believe that the "executive sponsor" who works to lobby for and approve a laptop mandate should be the same person to manage the day-to-day activity of the resulting project. In my experience, this is not a good recipe for success. Usually an [asst] principal, [asst] dean, or even director of technology gets the project approved but a person in any of these roles already has a full plate of other responsibilities. Focus is so important when implementing a 1:1 project. Administering a successful 1:1 encompasses many responsibilities, most of which are new to the school or department sponsoring the initiative:

• arranging visits to other 1:1 schools
• cultivating teacher buy-in
• negotiating the hardware package with vendors
• building the software image
• communicating to parents
• organizing and conducting initial PD/workshops
• meeting with individual teachers to start related tech projects
• setting up a help desk to fix laptops
• troubleshooting issues and corresponding with vendors
• interfacing with the network manager and/or database manager
• promoting the project to the media
• building and implementing an assessment/feedback rubric
• offering ongoing PD

Clearly there is enough here to warrant someone who is focused on carrying out the 1:1. I expect that the first thing most HR departments will want to do is put someone on the project part time. While not ideal, this is certainly a good step, especially if the role is designed intentionally. For example, you could take an experienced teacher, decrease his teaching load to one course, and put him on as "1:1 specialist" for the majority of his time.

From a financial perspective, schools can't afford NOT to budget for headcount to manage a laptop program. Most laptop or Tablet mandates I work with have 700-1,000 users, so a $1,000,000 price tag is not uncommon for starting a laptop program - and that's just the start-up cost. Spending big money to buy the laptops and hoping that the "tech folks" figure it out will likely result in big money down the drain. Hoping is not a good plan. Let me put it another way: if you had $1M in the stock market and you could ensure yourself a successful return by spending another 5% on an advisor, wouldn't you do it? The stakes are even higher in education because projects are usually deemed a success or a failure. A successful 1:1 reflects well on the school, administration, board, and community while a failed project makes all the stakeholders look silly.

Two of our 1:1 customers that are doing a good job are Duchesne Academy and Auburn City Schools. Duchesne is a private Catholic girls school in Houston, TX that has had a 1:1 for several years. Auburn is a public K12 system in Alabama that just started a 1:1 Tablet PC project in one high school. Both schools rolled out the laptops to teachers before students and both schools have former teachers managing the day-to-day of their 1:1. Each of these people works closely with his or her respective tech director and both have been intimately involved with their DyKnow software installations. Having a 1:1 specialist doesn't mean things won't go wrong, but if and when they do, schools like Duchesne and Auburn City are ready. We are proud to be associated with both schools and their successful 1:1s!