Teaching with Netbooks

The implication for faculty who would like to implement mobile learning in their online or traditional courses is that they can begin by making content and information available to students in formats easily accessible by mobile phone or laptop computer.

convert their lectures to podcasts or streaming media files and post them on their course Web sites, or on free online resources such as Apple's iPod University or YouTube, for convenient download.

The Division of Information Technology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison offers the following guidelines for creating podcasts14: Avoid overly complex material that includes lots of facts and figures. Complex subject matter is often more effectively conveyed through handouts and readings than through a podcast. This is because most students will listen to podcasts as they perform other tasks (i.e., riding a bus, driving, exercising, walking to class, etc.). In most cases they won't be taking notes as they listen. Always keep in mind the learner's context when selecting content for a podcast. Recordings of classroom lectures may not be the best use of podcasting. Podcasts of entire lectures often come across as overly formal and boring. Important visuals are excluded. Only use lectures as podcasts when you have a strong pedagogical rationale for doing so. Narrow the focus of a podcast. Limit the scope of the content to only a few main themes. Don't try to communicate too much material in a single podcast. Instead, identify important concepts or issues students tend to struggle with and develop a podcast that addresses each one.

There are a few tricks to optimize your netbook to meet the needs of students. Regarding the track pad on the netbooks, we disabled the tap feature that allows students to tap their track pad rather than clicking the button. We found that tapping the track pad was very confusing to elementary school students so we disabled it. We also slowed down the speed of the pointer and the double-click speed. We made changes to the Internet Explorer so that it had minimal menus as screen real estate is such a premium on a netbook you do not need to waste it on things like a Google bar or tabs. As a bonus, the new Internet Explorer does have a full screen option (F11) which allows students to see a lot more of a website by going to full screen mode. It also includes a zoom feature, so if students need to they can zoom out to see the entire web page. Mind you, on a netbook screen, the text will now appear very tiny. Another way to increase screen capacity on the small netbooks is to set the task-bar at the bottom to auto hide.

But for the past several years, though the need for one-to-one computing was clear, the cost was extremely prohibitive. Even with educational discounts, Macbooks run $900 apiece and cheaper laptops are more than $600 each (not to mention the costs of additional software, like Photoshop and Kidspiration).

mere implementation of 1-1 laptops alone will not accomplish great learning gains; they need to be integrated into effective, contemporary, forward-looking, best-practices learning environments, one where teachers are serious about engaged, active, collaborative, and creative student learning.

let’s not be too terribly deliberative and gradualist about this amazing opportunity to empower our students with these digital learning tools.   We have seen the future (I have seen it, at a bunch of schools), and we need to embrace it, not resist it.

we believe a ‘bottom-up’ approach is better than a ‘top-down,’” said Katie Morrow,