Source: http://goo.gl/Zl0YGn

Over at Assorted Stuff, Tim the Retiree (congrats, BTW! Try not to keel over in a month or so from the shock of not being employed) shares this perspective:

In his post yesterday, Doug says he is advocating in his district to give a computing device to all students in grades 6-12. But he refuses to call it a 1:1 program.
Instead of emphasizing the device (which that name certainly does), he wants everyone to understand that the primary purpose of whatever is selected is to enable students to have 24/7 access to digital resources.

Today, I found myself reaching for a term to describe “1 to 1.” While many districts are a long way away from implementing a successful 1 to 1, mainly because the teachers themselves aren’t at the top level of the classroom learning activity rubric–let’s be honest, you’d have to be super-human, right?–and dropping tech into the mix would just make the bad, worse,  it’s a horizon goal. . .that is, a goal that is worthy of aspiring to (aspirational edtech…oh wait, we’ve been doing that all along!).

Wait, let me circle back to that idea of tech making bad, worse. I remember that I was a teacher who wanted to get better, and blending technology into instruction made me get better. I learned so much learning how to use technology with my students–cooperative learning, collaboration, learning at a distance, multimedia, hyperlinking, H.E.A.T., focus on HOTS over LOTS, problem-based learning, project-based learning, information problem solving a la Big6/Super3–that I became a better teacher.

We may not call it 1 to 1, but we do need to drop it into classrooms, and give teachers bereft of hope something to aspire to. In fact, as Tim points out, students need to be a part of that conversation, too.