A Laptop for Every Child...

In my placement school every child in KS2 has been provided with a laptop from the school. These are taken home but brought into school about two days a week.

I saw them being used in the Yr 4 class with whom I am placed. During one lesson i observed the children were using them to research about WWII.

However, they're use i thought, was a waste of time. It took about 15 minutes for them all to get switched on and up and running. Lots of children had forgotten to charge their laptops and there was no places to plug them in in the classroom so many had to share. About 5 out of the 30 children had also managed to delete their Internet settings so couldn't get online while another 3 children couldn't get there laptops to work at all so they had to be sent off to be fixed by the schools ICT technician.

The lesson was not guided by the teacher and the vast majority of children failed to find the relevant information that they were looking for about the war and also struggled to find anything aimed at children their age. They came out with the most bizarre and wildly varying ideas about the Blitz. Some saying that they had found out that 45 people died in the Blitz while others said it was 675 etc.

I thought the whole lesson rather pointless.

But how could it be improved?

I'm not sure how you could get around all the technical problems with the laptop. However, I do think that there should have been more guidance about where to look for relevant information. I also think that the teacher should have got the class to collectively discuss their findings at the end of the lesson so that some of the random ideas that the children were forming about what the blitz was could be molded into a more accurate set of ideas.

All in all observing a 'laptop' lesson has made me worried about planning a lesson where laptops are used! I fear it could all be a tremendous faff. I would much prefer to use a well laid out ICT Suite so that i can keep an eye on what all the children are looking at and so that all children can have a functioning computer.