When it comes to implementing a large-scale 1-to-1 computing initiative, deciding which device students will use every day to support their learning requires a significant amount of thought and research. Laptop, netbook, Chromebook, tablet--each device has enough similarities to make the decision seem easy, but enough differences to make a big…

For the Garland Independent School District, a tournament was the tipping point. With too many of its students failing the math portion of state-mandated exams and in danger of being held back, the suburban Dallas district was determined to raise scores. The students lacked motivation, and Garland was seeking a better method of engaging them.…

What would an educator do with $650 million? Better yet, what "should" he/she do with $650 million? No, this is no game show. It's a real-life challenge posed to school districts nationwide in the year since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The bill dedicates more than $90 billion to education, with…

It's a riddle faced by virtually every IT director: how to fulfill users' desire for more muscular computing resources while still obliging administrators' commands to keep education spending down. Against long odds, many district technology directors have been fulfilling both counts, optimizing their computing systems with improvements that pay…

Few computing devices have sparked the burning gizmo lust ignited by the iPad. Apple's latest entry into the tablet PC market didn't generate much heat when it was first unveiled in January, but by April 3, the day of the official release, feverish customers were mobbing Apple stores. The company claims to have sold 300,000 iPads by midnight on…

John Abdelmalak, director of technology for the School District of the Chathams, was pretty sure it was time to jump on the virtualization bandwagon last year when he invited Dell to conduct a readiness assessment of his district's servers. When he saw just how little of their capacity was being used, he lost all doubt. Abdelmalak is one of many…

This article features Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), the nation's first-ever statewide 1-to-1 laptop program which marks its seventh birthday by expanding into high schools, providing an occasion to celebrate--and to examine the components of its success. The plan to put laptops into the hands of every teacher and student in grades 7…

Engagement is crucial for 21st-century students, and nowhere more so than at the middle school level. Middle school is a time of transitions for students--from a single, self-contained classroom with one teacher who knows every student well, to six or even eight classrooms in which teachers see more than 100 students every day; from a pedagogy…

The use of instructional technology has evolved over the last two decades, initially, instructional technology had two uses: learning about computers and using computers to increase basic skills. Learning about computers morphed into computer literacy, which is typically defined as the history, terminology and background of computing, using…

This article stresses that school administrators need to understand the history of education technology in order to introduce new ideas and learning opportunities to students. Pownell and Bailey (2002) described four predominant waves in the history of education technology: In the 1960s, the first phase included mainframe computers, which allowed…

Like many educators, the author and her colleagues (five faculty members and two IT techs) in the department of Media Communications and Technology at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania were interested to find out the status of tablet PCs in education. Microsoft listed 10 manufacturers of tablet PCs following two forms: the slate and the…

Two years ago, Mandeville High School (http://mandevillehigh.stpsb.org/index.shtml) in Louisiana purchased a mobile wireless computer lab with grant funds from the state. This lab not only helped improve the writing and research skills of the school's ninth-grade students, but also improved its overall performance score to become one of the…

Describes a magnet school in Revere, Massachusetts, developed around the theme of a technology-based curriculum for the purpose of integrating the district made up predominately of Southeast Asian students. Discusses the shcool's design, instruction and administration, library services, computer laboratories, and instructional adjustments made by…

As the fifth largest school district in California, Santa Ana Unified School District faces the challenge of providing technology access to its more than 63,000 students and over 6,000 certificated and classified staff members. This article describes how the district found the solution in wireless computing, which is now being used as a highly…