Pride of Ownership
Urban students are free to personalize their laptops in any way desired. Thus, says Levin, the iBook shells are typically covered with stickers and art. Students also download and install any software programs that interest them.
Students are using their iBook laptops to access and analyze information, and actually create knowledge. At the same time, their writing skills are improving.
— Mark Salkind, Head of School
The Urban School of San Francisco
“Students can do anything to the laptops that doesn’t violate copyright laws or the Computer Use Agreement, and doesn’t permanently alter them,” Levin explains. “If there are problems, we just zap the laptops back to their original configuration. But allowing the kids to customize their machines has encouraged pride of ownership, which encourages students to take better care of them.”
Sparking New Ways of Teaching and Learning
The 1 to 1 learning program has fostered new ways of teaching and learning at Urban School. For example, in physics classes, students now connect probes and sensors to their iBook laptops to collect and analyze data. Members of the chorus share audio files created by their teachers to stay note-perfect, whether they are altos, sopranos, or tenors.
In language classes, teachers use First Class to create and email audio files to their students, who then practice the lessons at home, record their oral pronunciations, and email them back to their teachers. English students also employ First Class to conduct online, interactive discussions about their latest literary selections. And art students no longer have to wait for free moments in the computer lab to work on their projects. With Photoshop Elements loaded on their iBook laptops, the creative process takes place whenever and wherever students desire.
A class project provided an entirely new perspective on modern history for students who interviewed and documented local Holocaust survivors. Working in teams, students recorded the survivors’ accounts on video, edited the stories with iMovie and QuickTime Pro, and created a public website to archive and deliver the oral histories to a worldwide audience. Later, an article published in the November 2003 issue of Learning & Leading with Technology, the publication of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), described how Urban School’s students used powerful mobile and digital video technologies to deliver this stunning project. Additionally, the history project was honored with a “Leading Edge Award” by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) as one of the best examples of technology use throughout the country.