Abstract:

This paper provides some initial findings from a current longitudinal study that examines the implementation of a 1:1 laptop program in a school for boys in Perth, Western Australia. The research tracks 192 students and their families, and a cohort of associated teachers for a 3 year period (2010-2012). Underpinning this research is a mixed methods approach investigating how boys use their laptops for learning, teachers’ pedagogy and use of ICT, implementation differences between a primary (n=56) and secondary (n=136) contexts, and the possible impact of laptop devices on learning. One issue that has emerged from the study, reportedly common in ICT-rich learning environments, is the problem of managing student distraction. Data collected, particularly from parents, indicates that the potential for students to use their laptops for gaming and accessing pornographic material is of serious concern. The school in this study has taken a proactive approach to managing student conduct both on, and beyond, its own network. Two student monitoring initiatives were implemented during the course of the research. The first – enhancement of parental control software –sought to integrate the parental control features of the laptops with the school network. The second initiative – e-safety - is a powerful web tracking service that records suspicious search strings and URLs that students visit. When used in tandem, these tools were shown to have a marked impact on the conduct of students in using their laptops. This paper describes the way in which these initiatives were implemented including their effect on the broader school community. The delineation of boundaries between school and home, negotiation of responsibilities for acceptable ICT use, and dilemmas between privacy and duty of care are also discussed.

Keywords:

1:1, laptop implementation, parental control, boys’ education, key-logging, monitoring.