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Creating Laptop Success: Training is the Key

Teaching with laptops can be a daunting task, especially if you are faced with new equipment, new platforms, new protocols, and other technical challenges.
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Teaching with laptops can be a daunting task, especially if you are faced with new equipment, new platforms, new protocols, and other technical challenges. Teaching with laptops create unique challenges and opportunities. Training is one way to help learn how to make the most of your tech resources.


Training Is the Key to Success
Ideally training should take place over a span of time to allow for practice and application of one skill before moving on to a new skill area. Spreading out learning also allows for peer groups to share successes and failures, thus increasing the amount of real knowledge and decreasing the risk factor that comes when applying newly acquired knowledge.

 

 

Also, training should be tiered to meet a range of the learner's needs. Starting with the basics—getting to know your machine and the software on it—and then leading up to more integration related activities is a logical progression.

 

 

Do It Yourself Training
If your school lacks a formal training department, here are some ideas from other teachers to help get you started.

  • Form your own "Laptop Support Group."
    Arrange to meet monthly or bi-monthly with others who seek support. Meetings can last as short as an hour after school and have each person take a turn facilitating. The facilitator is responsible for teaching a new skill to the others in the group. At first, it may be helpful to take an informal poll of things that each person might like to learn by participating in the group. Topics may range from email basics to presentation software.
  • Volunteer to help your school or district technology coordinator.
    Put together a notebook of "cheat sheets" for teachers that can be kept in the library or teacher's lounge. The notebook can be organized according to software product or hardware issue. It might include materials such as lists of frequently asked questions (FAQs), troubleshooting procedures, and tutorials for common software programs like Microsoft® Office. Better yet, compile the materials in digital format and either upload them to a common Web site or make them available on CD. You are sure to learn a lot in the process of compiling the materials.
  • Find a buddy with whom to work.
    Sharing a task can make it more enjoyable and enrich your sense of learning, as most adult learners actually prefer to work in groups. You and your computer buddy can help one another set and attain laptop learning goals as well as share lesson plans that work.
  • Track your progress with a calendar.
    Setting time aside for your own learning and practice is a key to any new endeavor. Choose a topic each month and carve out a few minutes each day to read, practice, and apply it.
  • Sign up for product training online.
    Many companies offer free modules of instruction at their Web sites. You can also search the Web for tutorials that other teachers have created. Take advantage of these yourself or use them in class as a whole group activity, especially for an unfamiliar program.

 

 

Training Is Not Just for Teachers
Your students may need help with the basics, like organizing homework and managing work-in-progress files.

 

 

Saving Files
Many students are familiar with PowerPoint and Word, but often lose files because they do not know where they are saved. Begin each semester with a lesson on naming, saving, and organizing files.

 

 

Learning Together

Another path toward integration is to learn alongside your students. Explain to them that you are trying out a new piece of software and they will need to learn to use it for an upcoming assignment.

 

 

Take a class period to go over the features with the help of a projector or LCD panel. While doing this walk-through, have at least a few "bells and whistles" in mind that you will show and then casually ask if anyone has anything to add. It is likely that one or more of your students have used the program before. This presents an opportunity for sharing and discussion as you all learn. Have someone assigned as note-taker so you can retrace your steps later.

 

 

Master the Pedagogy

According to Phil Kalloch,District Information Specialist at Scarborough Middle School in Scarborough, Maine, it is more important to "master the pedagogy" and not necessarily all the skills that come with using laptops in the classroom. He witnessed a shift in the veteran teachers who were "terrified" at first, but soon began learning with the help of their students.  "The teachers were intimidated" by the technology itself, but once they focused on "designing the learning environment," things came more easily, observed Kalloch.
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