From the Putnam Valley school district….

Edward Hallisey started his educational career as a music teacher, and the walls of his office are dotted with Beatles memorabilia. Now the principal of Putnam Valley Middle School, Mr. Hallisey is focusing his creative energies in a new area, one that he says is every bit as important in the development of “right brain�- style thinking as are the visual arts or music. That area is technology.

PVMS is the home of the four-year-old 1:1 Laptop Program, the innovative educational approach that by the autumn of 2008 will have put a school-owned laptop computer into the hands of every Putnam Valley student from grade five through grade twelve.

“When the program was launched in 2003, the students in grade seven were given 150 laptops to use during the school year,� Hallisey explained. “Now we have 1,250 laptops in grades six through eleven. Next fall everyone from grade five through grade twelve will have them. Imagine that: our youngest 1:1 Laptop Program participants will have had eight years of technology experience before they ever get to college. It will put them at an entirely different level than any other high school seniors in this area. This is what’s going to make our students special.�

Teachers, he emphasized, are the real heroes of this program. “They had to be trained to be effective laptop users before they could make the most of what the laptops have to offer, and then teach their students how to use them.� When the program began, “it was the seventh and eighth grade staff, not all of whom were laptop-literate, who really made it happen,� said Hallisey. “At the end of every year, they are the ones who are accountable for educational achievement and outcomes. They were willing participants who were able to take a huge risk and make it work,� he stressed.

Through a strong relationship with Apple, the company that provides the computers and the training that goes with them, and by funding the program through BOCES, the District has been able to realize a 60 percent return in New York State aid every year, allowing for expansion and upgrading each year without a significant cost to the Putnam Valley taxpayer. In fact, when asked about cost, Mr. Hallisey stressed that “the entire program to date has cost each District taxpayer less than five cents; not five cents a year, but five cents, total. The financial success for this program has solely been the work of Assistant Superintendent Paul Lee.  Without his support and expertise the program would never have gotten off the ground, let alone realized the current level of success.  �

The principal has clearly thought about all of the other possible concerns that community members might have about such an ambitious educational effort. “We are definitely not replacing pencil and paper in our classrooms,� Mr. Hallisey asserts. “We create ample opportunities for students to write, and there are dedicated reading times (through the Middle School’s DEAR program) that we take very seriously. What we tell our students is that these computers are tools and not toys. A computer can do a lot for a person, and we probably don’t need to “build� kids to do a lot of the things that computers can now do for them. But a computer can never be creative on its own. People are required to make creativity happen, even in a technological world. So while it seems counterintuitive, what we are really doing is encouraging the creativity in our students through the use of these laptops.�

The Middle School has not been shy about exploring everything that’s available on the Web these days. PVMS students initially experimented with WikiSpaces, websites of their own in a safe, monitored environment. Mr. Hallisey said that he was awestruck by the work that students did to make their spaces special. “There were incredible sites utilizing media, pictures, videos, text, graphics—you name it. Our students incorporated these features into their sites without any direction.� The only drawback, he explained, was that they had to be encouraged not to use “IM language� and abbreviations. After three days of having fun, they were instructed to go in to their spaces and add capital letters, punctuation, correct spellings, and make everything educationally appropriate. One teacher noted that her students were “getting blisters on their ‘delete’ fingers!�

The laptop program, Mr. Hallisey added, offers wonderful opportunities for discussions of behavior—what the school district calls character education. PVMS takes very seriously the topics of cyber-ethics and cyber-morality, and the students learn early that their laptops are a privilege, not a right. The district makes sure that students are using these devices appropriately by performing history checks—looking at the websites that a laptop user has visited. Staff members teach the skills that students need to do appropriate web surfing and electronic communication and everyone knows what the consequences are for inappropriate laptop use: the privilege of using the laptop is simply taken away for a specified period of time. A student is required to meet personally with Mr. Hallisey to talk about how he or she broke the rules, and it is entirely the student’s responsibility to explain to his or her parent(s) what happened to the laptop.

Mr. Hallisey is currently working at Columbia University towards a doctorate degree in Educational Technology and Media, and he is very eager to make the most of all the technology that the district commands. One class exercise for him was to teach a Middle School class using technology, which he gladly did at PVMS. Video of this class was actually sent to China, in a cooperative effort to find common ground in educational practices. “You might be surprised how little common ground there really is with educational systems in countries that have significant cultural differences from ours,� he explained. School hours, vacation periods, and levels of formality—how students refer to teachers, or  traditions of greeting, such as bowing to elders—can differ enormously, which we might expect. But, he added, “through information sharing we’ve learned, for example, that in China the students stay put and the teachers move from room to room. This type of logistical difference changes how both teachers and students approach the learning process.�

Asked how the 1:1 Laptop Program can mesh effectively with other district initiatives such as Curriculum Mapping and Data Warehousing, he explained, “Let’s say, for example, that our Data Warehouse, which provides us with electronic data analysis of our standardized test results, tells us that our students seem to be challenged by multiple choice questions. Through our laptop programming, we can direct students to sites that will help them to improve their multiple choice skills simply by engaging them in games and activities that promote this ability. They may not even realize that they are improving their multiple choice test-taking skills, but they are.�

Hallisey’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. Not only is PVMS one of the “stars� of the Apple computer website [visit www.apple.com/education/profiles/putnam/  to learn more], but the program has also been presented at the annual New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE) conference in Rochester, NY, a regional NYSCATE event in Wappinger’s Falls, and the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center (LHRIC) Technology Solutions Conference. Awards include the very prestigious LHRIC Pioneer Award in 2006 and, most recently, the Making It Happen Award from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).