Practical Theory

Here's an SLA announcement I've been hoping to make for quite some time. I've been hinting at it and now it's official:

SLA will be a 1:1 laptop school! Every student will be getting a G4 iBook, and Apple is very excited about working with us to use them to their fullest extent.

We are going to be modelling the "textbookless school" in that we did not order textbooks for every kid. We'll have classroom sets of books to use as references, but the laptops will be the primary learning tool at SLA. Our teachers have been working for six months to create curriculum that is technology infused, and obviously, having a web portal that uses tools like moodle and elgg and other tools to create a 24/7/365 learning environment form a big part of the puzzle.

We really have the opportunity to create School 2.0, and we can't wait to try.

I could write a 20 page post on everything we're thinking about with this, and I'm sure that, in the coming weeks, I'll approach that page total, but for now, let me just say this.

We're thrilled about the tools. We really are. But the tools follow the pedagogy. The SLA faculty is committed to a progressive pedagogy. We want to create an environment where learning starts with the questions we as a community ask together. We want our students to own those questions and own the answers they create.

The laptops aren't what change schools all by the themselves, the way we think about schools -- the way we plan, the way we teach, the way we assess, the way we talk about what our schools can and should be -- all those things are more important than the tools. But, hey, if all those things are in place, then the laptops can help you get to a really amazing place as a learning community. I can't wait to try to get there.