Computer Labs--Peering Into Our Past

Over the past twenty years, schools have grown quite accustomed to rooms full of computers. These are places where: teachers can take their classes to access technology; students can go to gain access to the Internet; and perhaps where Principals can put on semi-high tech presentations for their staff. In summary, schools have set up their technology use patterns by creating a place for people to go when they wanted to access technology.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going here. Technology only becomes useful when it can be accessed anytime, anywhere, quickly, during the point of need. Useful technology only becomes pervasive when it crosses the line from being something to play around with unto something you utilize freely. Once the technology becomes very accessible through time, place and also, financially, the innovation spills over into pervasive use and utilization in our society.

We are at the point in schools now where we will have to have thoughtful consideration of how we employ the new generation of technologies. We can't simply allocate and schedule computer labs as the place for students to go to use technology. It has to be at their fingertips at all times, just as it is for those of us who have become proficient users in our workplace (voicemail, email, cameras, recorders, projectors, PDA's, Intercoms, etc.). The greater majority of our students will only see the relevance of school once we learn to mimic the accessibility enjoyed by the rest of our society, including students at any time other than when they are at school.

MIT has launched a major initiative delivering oodles and oodles of laptop computers to third-world and impoverished nations. It is called the $100 Laptop Initiative. If you click on this link, you will see a short demonstration of how easy this is to handle and how conceivable it is for every child to soon have the technology they need at their fingertips at all times.

If this can happen on this large a scale, we are surely not far behind that time when laptops are carried by all of our students. We have to construct our schools in classrooms in a manner that these tools may be put to best use. Our teachers will have to improve their skills in teaching with technology, surely, and the rules that we have made for our schools will surely be affected.