Research Links
Technology Integration Research Review
Vanessa Vega, Edutopia (2013)
Technology integration can be one of the most challenging topics to find quality research on. The term itself is a broad umbrella for numerous practices that may have little in common with each other. In addition, technology tools change rapidly, and outcomes can vary depending on implementation. Edutopia's tech integration review explores some of the vast body of research out there and helps you navigate useful results. In this series of five articles, learn about three key elements of successful technology integration, discover some of the possible learning outcomes, get our recommendations on specific practices and programs by academic subject and promising tools for additional topics, find tips for avoiding pitfalls when adopting new technologies, and dig into a comprehensive annotated bibliography with links to all the studies and reports cited in these pages.
One to One Computing: A Summary of the Quantitative Results from the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative
Damian Bebell & Rachel Kay, Boston College (2010)
Student Achievement:
This paper examines the educational impacts of the Berkshire Wireless
Learning Initiative (BWLI), a pilot program that provided 1:1 technology
access to all students and teachers across five public and private
middle schools in western Massachusetts. Using a pre/post comparative
study design, the current study explores a wide range of program impacts
over the three years of the project's implementation. Specifically, the
document provides an overview of the project background,
implementation, research design and methodology, and a summary of the
quantitative results. The study details how teaching and learning
practices changed when students and teachers were provided with laptops,
wireless learning environments, and additional technology resources.
The results found that both the implementation and outcomes of the
program were varied across the five 1:1 settings and over the three
years of the student laptop implementation. Despite these differences,
there was evidence that the types of educational access and
opportunities afforded by 1:1 computing through the pilot program led to
measurable changes in teacher practices, student achievement, student
engagement, and students' research skills.
How Laptops Digitize and Transform Learning
Jenifer Corn, Jennifer Tingen, Rodolfo Argueta, Ruchi Patel, Daniel Stanhope, (2010)
21st Century Skills:
Laptops have been shown to improve 21st Century skills such as life and
career skills, learning and innovation skills, and group collaboration,
but how does this ever-present technology affect the thinking of
today's "screenager"? Through an analysis of focus groups and surveys
with students in 1:1 initiatives across North Carolina, researchers have
discovered multiple changes in learning and 21st Century skills when
students have access to laptops. The study included eight Early College
(EC) high schools and ten traditional high schools, with a total across
the eighteen schools of approximately 9,500 students and 600 school
staff.
Results & Lessons Learned from 1:1 Laptop Initiatives: A Collective Review
Lori B. Holcomb, North Carolina State University, (2007)
Student Achievement: Over the last ten years, the emergence of 1:1 programs has grown increasingly in popularity. More and more schools are implementing 1:1 programs as a means for increasing student achievement and performance. In fact, few modern educational initiatives have been as widespread and costly as the integration of laptop initiatives into education. As a result, a new vision in education has emerged as more and more schools across the country are now providing their teachers and students with laptops. In a 2006 eSchool News report, it was estimated that by 2007 nearly 25% of school districts in the United States would implement some form of a 1:1 computing. Currently, 1:1 initiatives exist in a wide variety of settings in Georgia, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota. The impact of 1:1 learning on student measures and outcomes has been examined and studied from several different angles, from looking at absentee rates to interest and motivation to achievement scores. This article highlights research findings relating to student and teacher outcomes and 1:1 laptop initiatives and presents lessons learned from 1:1 initiatives.
The ABC's of BYOL
Dian Schaffhauser, (2011)
Professional Development: The
Forest Hills Local Schools board in Ohio had always been supportive of a
1-to-1 program, but it simply did not have the resources to buy every
student a computer. The district had some laptops available, but only
enough for about one out of every five students. So, when a teacher
wanted to integrate technology into a lesson, the machines had to be
reserved, rolled into the classroom, and set up for the kids; or media
center access had to be scheduled and the class moved there for the
session. This article describes the launching of the district's
seventh-grade bring-your-own-laptop (BYOL) pilot and how a BYOL program
may eventually put a device into the hands of every student in the
district―and technology into every one of its classrooms.
Maine’s Middle School Laptop Program: Creating Better Writers
David Silvernail and Aaron Gritter, University of Southern Maine (2007)
Student Achievement: Eighth grade Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) writing scores were examined for
two time periods; for 2000, a year prior to implementation of the
statewide laptop program, and for 2005, five years after the initial
implementation of the program. Results indicate that in 2005 the average
writing scale score was 3.44 points higher than in 2000. This
difference represents an Effect Size of .32, indicating improvement in
writing performance of approximately 1/3 of a standard deviation. Thus,
an average student in 2005 scored better than approximately two thirds
of all students in 2000. A secondary analysis of the 2005 scale scores
revealed that how the laptops are being used in the writing process
influences writing performance. Students who reported not using their
laptop in writing (No Use Group) had the lowest scale score, whereas
students who reported using their laptops in all phases of the writing
process (Best Use Group) had the highest scale score. The difference in
Effect Size is .64, indicating that the average student in the Best Use
Group scored better than approximately 75% of the No Use Group students.
Laptops and Fourth-Grade Literacy: Assisting the Jump over the Fourth Grade Slump
Kurt A. Suhr, David A. Hernandez, Douglas Grimes, & Mark Warschauer, Boston College (2010)
Student Achievement: School
districts throughout the country are considering how to best integrate
technology into instruction. There has been a movement in many districts
toward one-to-one laptop instruction, in which all students are
provided a laptop computer, but there is concern that these programs may
not yield sufficiently improved learning outcomes to justify their
substantial cost. And while there has been a great deal of research on
the use of laptops in schools, there is little quantitative research
systematically investigating the impact of laptop use on test outcomes,
and none among students at the fourth-to-fifth grade levels. This study
investigated whether a one-to-one laptop program could help improve
English language arts (ELA) test scores of upper elementary students, a
group that often faces a slowdown of literacy development during the
transition from learning to read to reading to learn known as the
"fourth-grade slump." We explore these questions by comparing changes in
the ELA test scores of a group of students who entered a one-to-one
laptop program in the fourth-grade to a similar group of students in a
traditional program in the same school district. After two years'
participation in the program, laptop students outperformed non-laptop
students on changes in the ELA total score and in the two subtests that
correspond most closely to frequent laptop use: writing strategies and
literary response and analysis.
Emerge One-to-One Laptop Learning Initiative: Final Report
University of Calgary, (2010)
21st Century Skills:The
Emerge One-to-One Laptop Learning Project (Emerge) was established in
2006 by Alberta Education to investigate the efficacy of laptops for
teaching and learning in the 21st Century. Alberta Education used a
competitive process in 2007 to award three-year grants to 20
jurisdictions, involving 50 schools. Each of the 20 jurisdictional
grantees selected a specific target population, or 21st Century Skill
set, as a focus for their three-year grant award. Many of the Emerge
jurisdictions focused on a common set of 21st Century Skills such as
critical thinking, collaboration, global awareness, or information and
communication technology (ICT). The Emerge jurisdictions deployed
one-to-one laptop learning at specific grade levels or with specific
student populations within their targeted schools. None of the Emerge
programs were school-wide deployments. While in some Emerge programs the
laptops followed the students (for as long as those students were
enrolled in the host school), other jurisdictions made the decision to
keep the laptops at specific grade levels, which meant new groups of
students in the program each year. Still others had hybrids of the two
approaches.