One of the best parts of my job is connecting with so many dynamic, creative people at the school, district and state level, who are doing thoughtfully designed, innovative one-to-one projects.Many of these projects are in the United States, but I've also been speaking with educators in other countries who have joined AALF and kindly agreed to share their ideas, strategies, and research with the rest of the AALF community. For example, over the last two months I've learned about several interesting initiatives in Canada; the Notebook Research Project in New Brunswick, the eMerge project in Alberta, and the Enhanced Learning Strategy in Quebec - three different regions with very different approaches to implementing one-to-one initiatives across a large number of schools. Over the next few months, we will be sharing not only research from these initiatives, but also stories from both teachers and students.  We know you'll find these stories enlightening as well as entertaining.

Also, in the planning stages for spring, 2008, is an AAL Practicum for schools and districts that have decided to go 1-to-1 and want to have concrete, practical guidance on planning, deployment, and community communications, as well as curriculum design and best practices for 1-to-1 learning in the classroom. More information will be available soon on the AALF website.

Happy Holidays to all the AALF community!

Dr. Cavallo is Director for Central and South America of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) group, whose mission is to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are sufficiently affordable to provide every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression. Dr. Cavallo is also the co-head of the MIT Media Lab's Future of Learning group, which focuses on the design and implementation of new learning environments and on the design of new technologies that will change the way people think about "learning" and "school." Dr. Cavallo has advised numerous heads of state and ministries of education on the adoption of advanced technologies for learning and the reform of educational institutions.

"We're thrilled Dr. Cavallo has accepted our invitation to join the AALF Advisory Board," said Bruce Dixon, President of AALF. "He possesses a wealth of knowledge and experience around innovative learning environments and the role of new technologies in learning. Dr. Cavallo's insights will help guide us as we explore ways in which the AALF can continue to assist countries around the world in implementing large scale learning initiatives in which all children have access to laptops."

During the first week of laptops in my classroom, I was asked two questions (among others).  "Sir, have you had a chance to look at the website I created for my father's business-it's on the Web?" and "Sir, what is a login code?"It was clearly going to be fun bringing those two poles towards each other.

I teach English at Bishops, an independent fee-paying boys' school in Cape Town, South Africa.  During the year that we celebrated our 150^th anniversary (1999) we launched our laptop project after two years of planning and preparations.Central to our planning had been the idea that the presence of laptop technology in classrooms would lead to a transformation in approaches to teaching and learning.  We wanted our boys to be able to leave school completely comfortable and competent with computers.  We had also held the view for several years before laptops that computer-usage in schools had to be a means to an end, and never an end in itself.  We wanted the laptops to make possible a better learning environment for our boys-a way of learning differently from what had been possible in traditional classrooms.  As I approached the actual teaching, I was looking forward to putting into practice the ideas that had been shaping our preparations for so long.

The first adaptation I had to get used to was breaking down the idea that the focal point of the classroom was, as in traditional classrooms, where the teacher sits, stands, or teaches from.  What was interesting to observe was which colleagues embraced the intended schema for the arrangement of desks, and which reverted to a traditional pattern of straight rows with all pupils facing the front (and a wild spaghetti of cables, flylead and powerleads across the floor and the passageways between desks).

By the end of the year, most people agree that the laptops had certainly created extra motivation in the boys. Whereas four pages of handwritten work would have sufficed, twenty pages of typed essay were more likely to be the norm.  Boys were willing to put in far longer hours getting something right than had ever been the case before.  One evening I looked out of my window (I live on the school grounds) and saw a boy huddled up at the base of the mapppost outside my window.  I guessed his lift was late, so I went out to offer him a phone call.  As I got closer (and before he noticed that I was approaching), I saw that he was working away on his laptop.  So I stopped, tip-toed away and left him to it.

Some experiences proved to be spin-off learning lessons for our teachers.  Quite early on, a colleague wanted his class to write a passage of English with a specific world limit.  He asked the class generally whether they knew how to use the word count function.  "Yes, yes, yes" came the response.  He checked individually. Every boy said he knew how to do the word count.  At the end of the lesson, the rest of the class filed out, and one boy remained behind.  When John looked up to see why the boy had stayed, he was horrified to find the boy in tears.  "What is it, what is wrong?" he asked.  "Sir, I don't know how to do the word count," was the reply.  The boy had been too intimidated by the bravado of the others who knew (or claimed to know) the procedure.  The boy had preferred to lie rather than reveal a justifiable ignorance about a relatively simple computer operation.  We (our department) were all chastened by this story, which shows how difficult peer pressures can be.

The greatest moment for me came about three months after we started our laptop program, when one mother came to me and said that one of the first things her son had done when he got his machine had been to load up five or six games.  Now, three months later, she saw him deleting all the games from his hard drive.  She asked him why he was doing that.  "Well, Mom," he said, "I don't get the time to play the games anymore, and anyway, the work I am doing is much more interesting than playing those games - they are just getting in the way."

In what ways has my own teaching changed as a result of being in the laptop programme?  Instead of planning each lesson as individual lessons, I now create learning programmes that stretch over a week or longer.  I consciously explore a variety of responses, all of which can be manufactured or presented through the laptop.  The laptop gives me a vehicle with which to set up combined learning with teachers in other disciplines.

We know that today's learners are different than they were even a decade ago. Each year our K-16 schools are being called to serve increasing numbers of students who have lived their entire lives surrounded by and interacting with digital tools to gather and process information. These "Digital Natives" have grown up using computers, video games, digital music players, video cameras, and cell phones to gather and process the information that they use to construct their own understanding of the world. They really do think differently. They actually use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to think. It seems to me that it would not be a stretch to say that these young people truly are "Cyborgs." And because ICT has become so integral to their lives, they are simply not well served by traditional lecture-based modes of teaching alone.

Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. -Marc Prensky

If given the choice, these students would come to school carrying their own laptop computers ready to connect to the campus wireless network so they could get about the business of thinking and learning. Unfortunately for all of us, most Digital Natives attend traditionally structured schools that impose a single way of knowing on every student and are committed to an outdated educational philosophy based solely on transmitting a precise body of knowledge from instructor to student. A majority of our schools actually have policies in place that prohibit the students from bringing their computers to school. Our children are not allowed to bring the tool that Seymour Papert calls the primary instrument for today's intellectual work with them to school. It's unthinkable.

Interestingly, it is the influx of these Digital Natives into our schools that is providing the impetus for needed educational reform. It's getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that the cyborgs are coming. Ready or not, here they come. Many have already arrived in our schools and many, many more are on their way. Thanks to the visionary work of Seymour Papert and other educational pioneers like him, and because of the continued work of organizations like AALF, the old schoolhouse model is slowly, slowly giving way to new collaborative learning environments where teachers and students together decide what to learn, how to best create this new knowledge, and what technologies they should use to support the process. Research in neurobiology, social psychology, and learning science shows that 1-to-1 programs have the power to provide learning opportunities that vastly improve today's students' achievement, advance digital equity, and enhance teaching and learning across the disciplines. And case studies indicate that when carefully implemented, teachers and students actually love this stuff. Educational leaders, pressed to find ways to meet the needs and expectations of today's students, want to meet the challenge by implementing ubiquitous computing programs designed to support the creative use of ICT throughout the students' academic preparation. Okay. So, why aren't there more 1-to-1 programs in place in our schools today? What I really want to know is: Where is the revolution?!

can learn.-- Albert Einstein

AALF members have all read about it, and many of us have experienced first hand the magic that can happen in these exciting new technology-supported learning environments. Educators and students are being given opportunities to co-discover creative ways to leverage the unique skills, attitudes and interests of today's digitally savvy learners in ways that maximize the potential that technology brings to the teaching-learning process. Information and Communication Technologies-always accessible but rarely the actual focus of learning-enables each member of the learning community to get connected, construct knowledge in a personally meaningful way, and demonstrate their intellectual competence and creativity using a variety of modalities. Put simply, ICT provides the essential conditions in which Digital Natives learn. The spread of digital technology into every other sector of society makes it inevitable that it will eventually permeate school. Eventually, every student-and most pre-school children-will have more computing power than any professor of computer science has today. Indeed, already most home computers have more power than any professor had thirty years ago. And when children grow up with this kind of knowledge-technology it is inconceivable that school will not change very radically.

The choice is not whether we will consider deep changes in school but how many children will be lost before we recognize that we have to do so. -Seymour Papert and Gaston Caperton, 1999

Because Digital Natives think and process information fundamentally differently, we must address the reality that, as Marc Prensky puts it, "our instructors speak a different language than their students (that of the pre-digital age), and our faculty are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language." The way I see it, educational leaders today are faced with a fundamental choice. They can create, manage and lead innovation from within, or they can be pressured to change by outside economic and societal forces. Those who are fortunate enough to find themselves in positions of influence during this time of unprecedented cultural transition are being called to take on the complex role of vital change agent. Educational leaders are struggling to understand how they will manage to conjure up this new kind of learning community to serve both the digital natives (students) and their "digital immigrant" teachers. Let's face it, this is a daunting job description all on its own, and when added to the many existing responsibilities that educational leaders in K-16 already juggle on any given day, it is understandable that even the most seasoned, conscientious and forward-thinking principal, college dean, school board member and/or district superintendent would be hesitant in the face of launching such a comprehensive, potentially costly and media-attracting change in their school. Failure would be embarrassing, to say the very least. So this is exactly the point where Bruce Dixon's Technology Coach comes to the rescue! It would be a great comfort to any school administrator who is embarking on 1-to-1 implementation for the first time to know that he/she has the ongoing support of a senior education consultant who has been down that road before. An experienced Technology Coach can serve to break the inertia of uncertainty and fear by facilitating and guiding the integration effort on an operational level from the start to help ensure a smooth, efficient and successful 1-to-1 implementation. Knowing that constituents will embrace holistic changes to their established routines and protocols only if they understand the need for the change, the feasibility of successfully making the change happen, and their involvement in the process, the Technology Coach would begin by collaborating with school leaders to craft a vision for the initiative that elicits broad community involvement. The Technology Coach, drawing upon his/her experience and expertise, can serve as a guide for the implementation team as they plan, organize, and problem-solve the steps to create their new culture and to align people with the new vision. The Technology Coach can provide encouragement and support as the implementation team works together to bring their shared vision to fruition in spite of any obstacles that they may encounter along the way.

With the help of Technology Coaches, I envision increasing numbers of education leaders forging ahead to implement ubiquitous ICT learning programs where all members of the learning community are equipped with the digital tools they need to access and process information and communicate what they have learned with others.  Pioneering school leaders are already leveraging ICT to transform the teaching-learning process in this way. Today's pioneering school leaders will become tomorrow's Technology Coaches, and so it goes.  Ubiquitous computing programs are providing a platform for the reinvention of formal education to meet the needs of today's learners. Educational leaders, together with their Technology Coaches, can change the very culture of their schools by enabling learning incidents that are not possible without ubiquitous access to information and communication technologies. Over time, step-by-step-by-step, we can transform not only the physical learning environment we now call "school", but also the learning process itself, including the fundamental interaction among students, teachers and all members of the learning community.

Pioneering educational leaders, bolstered by the expertise of their Technology Coaches, can break through the inertia of fear to model the transformational leadership required to implement brand new 1-to-1 learning programs that engage and empower today's students so they may express what they know with passion and thereby achieve an entirely new standard of educational excellence.

Melissa LeBoeuf Tothero is a technology consultant who has been devoted to the field of education for over 20 years. She is dedicated to amplifying students' voices so they may express what they know with passion.