Thursday, December 30, 2010

16 Laptops in the Library

When I started my new Teacher-Librarian job, I sadly discovered that the school has only 7 computers in the library.  This is certainly not up to 21st Century Learning Standards, for it does not allow a class of students to do research work in the library.  Thankfully, working with our district instructional technology people, we were able to get 16 old laptops set up on WiFi in the library.  The two ways I see these working for classes are:

1) While half the class uses the laptops for research, the other half uses library books for research, then they switch; therefore, each student gets his/her own individual time with the laptop.

2) Encourage teachers to let students work in pairs on their research projects.  This allows 2 kids per laptop and encourages teamwork/collaborative learning as well.

I look forward to hearing other ideas from educators on how to utilize the 16 laptops in the media center for student learning.

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