1 to 1 laptop program.

Some advice in teaching with "1 to 1 laptop program", by Thomas Daccord.

Regarding training, I was unprepared for managing a computer environment when I taught my first laptop classroom in 2000. While a notebook and pencil, or a classroom window, offer significant opportunities for distraction in class, computers open a Pandora’s box of ways for students to ignore you and goof off during class.

If teachers fail to develop sound computer management techniques and strategies to deal with distractions they may become frustrated in the 1-1 environment.

So, I offer the following tips on laptop classroom management: (Many are culled from my book, Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology: A Practical Guide for Teac...)
:
1. Keep yourself moving. If you are teaching while your students are at their computers, you need to be constantly circling the room, looking at what students are doing, watching for the telltale signs of illicit programs being quickly minimized. Consider the layout of tables and chairs in your classroom and be sure that you are able to move around the room quickly and unimpeded. If you do this regularly, you’ll find that you end up doing a lot of teaching from the back of the room, where you can see everyone’s screens. Teaching from the back of the room has the added benefit that you can see the class, the board, and the projection screen from a student perspective. (With a handy pointer device that can be bought at a computer store, it is even possible to control your computer and projector from a distance.) Plus, all that circling and hovering can be great exercise!
2. Keep the subject moving. If the activity and conversation are moving fast enough and the material is engaging and challenging enough, students won’t have time to mess around. Of course, some students might not
be able to keep up. Use this one carefully, and think about whether the primary purpose at that moment is for the students to amass information or reflect upon it to gain understanding. If it’s the latter, consider asking the students to lower their laptop screens and focus more acutely on the conversation.
3. Hold students accountable. If you do have problems with students misusing machines, often punishing one or two can have a quieting effect on the rest of the group, at least for a little while. If you do so early in the year, you send a strong message to the students that the computers are to be used for academic purposes and nothing else.
4. Make each screen visible. If possible, set up the room in a horseshoe with you at the center so you can watch the students work. If you must have students seated in rows, sit in the back of the classroom where you can see their screens. Screens create a barrier. It’s subtle, but there is something about the laptop screen that creates a barrier between students and teachers.
5. For better discussion, lower laptop screens or close desktop monitors. Whenever you want to just have a discussion with students to flush out an issue, make them lower their screens. If you use laptops, teach your students to “close to a thumb” which means that they don’t quite close the laptop, keeping a thumb’s width between the keyboard and the screen so that the computer doesn’t go into sleep mode. When the conversation ends and you want them to start taking notes again, give them a few minutes to type up a summary of the important points from your conversation before moving on. If you are in a computer lab where students are working with computers, have them shut off the monitors when you want to speak to them.
6. Check Web Browsing history. Direct them all to the same Web site at the beginning of the class. Then check their Internet history at the end of class. See where they have been during class!
7. Be sure that your students’ work is easily portable. It doesn’t make sense for students to take notes on computers if they cannot access their files in class, at school, and at home. Suggestion: Use online portfolios. Make sure students have somewhere they can reliably store their notes online. Suggestion: Use a thumb drive. Some schools mandate that students purchase their own thumb drives, or flash drives, to bring to school. At the very least, you might suggest to your students that they purchase an inexpensive thumb drive to move electronic files quickly from computer to computer.
9. For tests or quizzes require students to make their word processor full screen. Make sure that students are not working in windows that allow them to look at anything other than their work.
10. Big Brother is sometimes right Consider a collaboration space (like Elluminate) where you can see students screens and monitor activity. Use it principally as a teaching tool, but also as a surveillance tool.

Hope that you like it.