When starting or refreshing a One-to-One program, it’s important to understand the essentials. The components outlined below are based on research from my book “One-to-One Learning: Laptop Programs That Work” which included interviews with laptop leaders, a review of the existing studies and literature, and my experience leading a successful One-to-One initiative at a school.

Anyone who plays the lottery wonders what it would be like to hit the jackpot. Questions arise from these daydreams such as, What would I do first? What would I buy that I have always wanted? and How fast can I tell my boss that I quit?

Imagining what life in the schools would be like with the ideal technology staffing solution sometimes seems like the same type of opportunistic daydream. If funding were not a roadblock and attracting and retaining the best candidates was a given, what might an ideal technology staff in a typical school district look like?

Part 1: Leadership

It’s my great pleasure to be writing a column on one-to-one programs in schools for Hot Chalk. Every month I’ll be looking at a different aspect of one-to-one---one Internet-connected device per student--- through the lens of effective teaching and learning. Because leadership is a key component of a successful one-to-one program, I think that is a natural starting point.

Teachers have a powerful tool, a spreadsheet, that can help them to monitor students' growth. Say she wants to track her kids during the year on the goal of interpreting and reacting to charts, a subpart of Standard 1 in English Language Arts. She can easily create a standard-specific goal-focused spreadsheet to assist in the monitoring.

The past couple of articles have taken a look at digital students, who they are and what recent research has to say about them. Next, we as educators must figure out how to motivate, challenge and support these divergent thinkers utilizing their primary tool of the trade: Technology. Digital students need supportive educators who are willing to suit up for the journey to a world that for many educators is in outer space.

Over the past few years, the topic of digital students and how they think has created quite a buzz. Questions have arisen as to whether the minds of today’s youth are somehow different, and altered by exposure to media. There are many schools of thought regarding this topic, but is there evidence to concretely support the concept that digital students actually think differently?

Many educators, over the past couple of years, have had the chance to participate in a number of online synchronous professional development sessions, commonly called Webinars. Vendors often give product walk-through presentations using the WebEx online conferencing program. The International Society for Technology in Education presents professional development sessions using Adobe Connect, another Web-based presentation software. Other districts and educational agencies choose Elluminate as their presentation platform. Each of these products has similar components—they allow the participants to view a presentation, chat in a chat window to ask questions or make a comment, create polls to collect data from the participants in real-time, and sometimes even allow the use of a microphone in addition to a chat window. Usually, the sessions are recorded and archived so participants can go back and review the presentation or share it with others in their professional learning community.

This is Part Two in our series, "Technology Directors Leadership."

Leading a school district’s technology program is not for the faint of heart. There is never enough time in the day or money in the budget to solve all the problems. A key factor to helping manage the onslaught of issues is a strong and supportive team. With all the changes and demands of integrating technology across the range of district functions, support staff for technology are assuming a growing number of roles. Gone are the days when the technology team simply repaired equipment, provided training and managed network users. Those specialized activities have been replaced by a myriad of tasks more “mission critical” than ever to the success of a school district. Much emphasis is placed on developing and supporting our teachers and administrative leaders - and technology staff should not be overlooked. Spending time to reflect on the care and development of your technology staff should be a part of the planning process for every district technology leader. From improving departmental coverage to helping staff attain their professional goals, there is no shortage of areas on which to focus.

This week, I'm going to focus on several sites geared to help you quickly fix images, as well as teach your students the basics in Photoshop - without ever having to buy the program.

Photographs provide a valuable resource in developing students' language skills whether those students are English, English as Second Language, or World Language students. Pictures provide a solid structure for students as they develop their skills; the largest collection of digital pictures to use in the classroom comes from Flickr.