What developments have influenced the growth of “one-to-one laptop computing” in schools?

The percentage of language minority students in US schools continues to grow, with nearly four million K-12 students receiving special instruction as English language learners (ELLs) (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2004). Many more non-native speakers of English graduate out of ESL programs to mainstream instruction, but have still not fully caught up with grade level instruction. Unfortunately, most language minority students never achieve academic success in the US, with great disparities between them and native English speakers in standardized test scores, graduation rates, college admission and completion rates, and adult wages (Noguera, 2001).

Laptops and literacy

New technologies have been promoted as a potent tool for helping language minority students develop the kinds of reading, writing, and thinking skills that contribute to academic literacy (see, for example, Cummins and Sayers, 1995; Warschauer, 2003). However, studies suggest that the actual use of computers and the Internet with language minority students in K-12 schools leaves much to be desired, due in part to the complexity of integrating new technology in instruction when students have

The study

In this paper, we provide case studies of two schools that have successfully made use of high-technology environments, including one-to-one laptop computing, with language minority students. As part of a national study of K-12 one-to-one computing, our research team identified two schools that demonstrated exemplary models of laptop instruction with ELLs toward developing academic literacy. Following that identification, educators from those schools were invited to assist us in further

Adelante Elementary School

Adelante Elementary School is located in a low-income Latino community of California. Some 96% of the students in the school are Latino and 75% are designated as ELLs. As a grade 4–6 school, Adelante deals with students at a critical juncture for the development of academic literacy. Students in upper elementary school must go through a transition from learning to read, with a focus on decoding skills, to reading to learn, with a focus on comprehension of increasingly challenging expository

Urbania Middle School

Urbania Middle School represents a different, but we feel equally effective, approach to using laptops to promote academic literacy. Urbania serves the most economically, academically, and linguistically diverse neighborhoods in the state of Maine. Among a population of 520 students in grades six through eight, approximately 24% of students are from immigrant or refugee families, speaking some 25 languages. The largest groups of ESL students come from Somalia and Sudan, with others from

Conclusion

The promotion of academic literacy involves far more than “teaching English”. Rather, it involves offering students “access to the ranges of knowledge, abilities, and forms of language” that will enable them “to lay claim to the social identities that afford them a participant status” in academic communities, and provide the scaffolding and supportive environment necessary for attainment of these (Hawkins, 2004, p. 23). New technologies are an extraordinarily valuable tool to facilitate this

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was supported by grants from the Ada Byron Research Center for Diversity in Computing and Information Technology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and the UCI Cultural Diversity Studies Program of the Council on Research, Computing and Library Resources. We are also grateful for the involvement in the broader laptop research project of LaWanna Shelton-Carrigan, Kelly Bruce, Melanie Wade, and Jorge Velastagui (http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/research.html).

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