after the bell

I ran across this post by Chris Lehmann, a former tech coordinator and now principal of the Science Learning Academy in Philadelphia. He talks about two ideas that are probably central for a principal at a “progressive” school: Making decisions that push the envelope of traditional schooling and empowering students to deal with freedom and the responsibility afforded by new technologies.

Specifically, he tells us about his school’s response to students misusing instant messaging capability in a 1:1 computing environment. I thought this was interesting because of two conversations threads we’ve been having in our methods class: (1) we spent the last week talking about the decisions teachers make to facilitate an orderly learning environment, and (2) the challenges introduced when a teacher decides to use information technology in his or her classroom.

If you started teaching in a school where all students had laptops, how would you deal with their use of instant messaging? What do you think of Chris’s description of how the issue is being handled in their school?