Laptops, Student Safety and SLA

The local news ran two pieces today, one in the Philadelphia Inquirer and one that was a lead story on the CBS affiliate, about the safety of students going home carrying laptops. I'm quoted in both stories, both are sound bite quotes that don't get to all of what I was trying to say, but that's to be expected. I'm more disappointed that the interviews our kids gave weren't included, because I thought they were fantastic and on-point about how they were planning on dealing with the issue.

I'm sort of frustrated that this is the issue currently getting play in Philadelphia. We have two schools opening with 1:1 program, and we have a CEO who wants to study us and expand the program dramatically in the coming years. We should be talking about how Philadelphia is getting serious about being a player on the national stage of educational technology and education reform. We should be talking about how we can transform education. We should be talking about what else has to change in our schools to make the laptops effective, and instead, today's headlines take a positive and attempt to spin it into a negative.

Let me be clear -- our students' safety, both in our halls and outside of our doors, is of paramount concern. We need safer streets and a safer society. And yes, I do worry about a student getting harmed because someone knew that they were carrying a laptop. But we do work with the kids to minimize the threat. And for any urban schools planning a 1:1, I'd think about a few good ways to keep your kids safe:

1) Don't get the students bags that obviously carry laptops. Get them backpacks that look like regular school bags. (But with a padded sleeve, of course.)
2) Teach your kids to keep their bags with them at all times between home and school.
3) Teach kids to keep the laptops in their bags when they are in transit.
4) Most importantly -- teach them that no laptop is worth their life.

I'm all for other good words of wisdom here, but in the end, it's about using common sense and staying safe. And sadly, laptops in bags or not, too many of our kids go home to neighborhoods where staying safe is harder than it should be.