November 2005 — Features

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Warming Up To Wireless

Most teachers ground their entire careers on establishing a monopoly of control in the classroom, explains Owen— teaching what they want, when they want, anyway they want to teach it. Bringing a wireless laptop into this environment, which means forfeiting some of this control to students, is a much tougher sell than a new textbook or lesson plan. Owen says the best way to prepare teachers for the transition to wireless is to do so from the bottom up—employing a populist approach similar to the one that drove Internet use. In Irving ISD, this has translated into identifying true technology stars among the teacher base and letting them be the ones to blaze trails for their colleagues to follow.

“When teachers see that their friends are OK with something new,” Owen says, “they’ll dip their t'e in the water and try a few things. Wireless really forces these teachers to restructure the way they teach and interact with kids. It’s difficult sometimes, and people don’t tend to think about that.”

A Statewide Revolution
If the practice of teaching teachers in a district the size of Irving sounds like a tough go, just imagine how daunting the task is for Bette Manchester, director of special projects for the Department of Education in Maine. Since the end of 2001, Manchester and a team of specialists affiliated with the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) have overseen a massive rollout of more than 43,000 wireless Apple iBook (http://www.apple.com) computers to nearly 240 school districts across the state. When asked to identify the reasons for the success of the multimillion-dollar program, she cites the department’s decision to put the same emphasis on teaching teachers about the new technology as it d'es on distributing the technology to students. She adds that the program, much like wireless technology itself, continues to evolve every day.

As Manchester explains, professional development around the state’s wireless initiative began before students even received their computers. In early 2001, the state started using federal and state money to sponsor professional learning opportunities designed to get teachers thinking about expanding the curriculum through technology. As the program matured, development programs for school principals and tech coordinators did too. The state used a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (

http://www.gatesfoundation.org) to stipend a squadron of “teacher leaders” for each school. These leaders work with principals to outline specifically what they need to make wireless worth their while. As teachers have played a bigger role in identifying the needs for professional development and management of the devices in this new environment, their interest in the effort has jumped.

“[You have to] expect teachers to use technology and then reassure them that you’re providing them the help and professional development to make [wireless] part of their routine,” Manchester says. “One of the teachers I worked with on this project has been teaching for 35 years. At first, he told me he was going to retire from teaching because he thought this was such a foolish endeavor and a waste of money. Six months later, he told me it was the best year he ever had in teaching.”