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Chris Dahlberg wrote...
....What kind of evaluation scheme are you going to use?

It's difficult to assess a tool used as an adjunct to a curriculum driven by state standards. Nevertheless, for every rollout so far there has been an immediate decrease in absenteeism, an increase in quality and quantity homework, more "on task" learning, and more effective collaborative learning. Student and teacher acceptance of the initiative has been almost 100 percent--try getting those numbers with textbooks!

The next obvious goal is to replace textbooks completely with online curriculum. Issues such as internet safety, student liability, and equity are being fine-tuned as the program evolves. Meanwhile, FCAT and other nationally normed testing will eventually yield the final data assessment.

This would be the next logical step for the high school where I teach. Private school setting so it would be quite a selling job to convince the parents to spring for the extra tuition it would take to cover the leasing of the machines.

Check out Bradenton Academy online--they successfully went 100 percent one-to-one a few years ago.

Any plans to let the students purchase the iBooks at the end of the year?

At this point of the game I believe the iBooks are a 4 year program. The difficulty will be explaining to the community that computers are consumables, not furniture, and will need to be refreshed periodically. Of course we will also be able to cut the cost of texts, paper, and other support mechanisms already in place for the way curriculum is currently handled. So far the concept has received high marks. This is a major paradigm shift in the way teachers teach and the way students learn, and I feel our education system is destined to take this direction.

Vic