Report Broken Links Here

    Follow us on Twitter  Become a Fan on Facebook

By this fall every new student at our college is required to have a laptop computer and the following year that requirement upgrades to a Tablet PC from then on. 

Some of the things driving this we understand and some we don't.  As we try to conserve resources these machines are needed to go paperless.  Much of our references, resources, responses, and requirements are tied to the WWW in some way.  The explosion of knowledge in most every field is forcing us to teach students HOW to learn (metacognition) as much what to learn.  If we're going to be honest with ourselves we must admit that laptops and their electronic cousins are here to stay.  We must begin to learn the educational implications of this new reality.

Unfortunately, we don't have a clue about the doctrine, strategy and tactics needed to embrace, exploit and entertain their use and usefulness.  Doctrine describes what we believe and teach about the best way to do business - a sort of overall guiding philosophy.  Strategy describes what would constitute the best approach given the doctrine and tactics are the everyday practices used to carry out the strategy.  

This small group session will be dedicated to the challenge of trying to identify, somewhat, the doctrine, strategy and tactics of individual and/or group laptop use through a Delphi like activity to flush out and prioritize some actions for educators to help deal with this new reality.  I envision this session will produce a robust list of assets and liabilities of student laptop use during class.  I further expect this small group to produce some ROE's (rules of engagement) to exploit the assets and minimize the liabilities.  Finally, I will facilitate the discussion and recording of possible research questions to help begin to scientifically study the challenge and opportunities that this development is presenting to us as educators.

Copyright 1997-2010 IAMSE  Privacy Statement