1:1 - Why?

1:1 via edtechteacher.org

Every now and then I come across an article that, while on the surface level seems fairly innocuous, causes me incredible consternation, articles like this,

"Kids Who Have to Share iPads Learn Better Than Kids Who Have Their Own".

The article is not a new one, but like many articles of its ilk, it has a habit of resurfacing periodically, as it did this week, finally motivating me to put fingers to keys.

There are so many things wrong with the assumptions made by the writer of this article, that it’s hard to know where to start. So in the absence of any better course of action, I’ll start at the beginning.

Firstly can we all just assume that, of course, sharing is a good thing, and so by implication is learning to share; but the truth is that it's the sharing that is beneficial not the object of the sharing. I see kids sharing and collaborating regularly, even when using their own screens; the extent to which this happens is all to do with the classroom culture carefully crafted by a caring teacher and nothing to do with the nature of the particular item.

Secondly, there is a problem with the evidence basis for the the findings of the research, starting with the assumption that performance in “a standardized literacy test at the end of the year compared to the beginning” is a valid measure.  Not to mention that an improvement of 28% v 24% in a study of 352 students really is not statistically significant, despite what the study's author says, another reason why it's never a good idea to rely on one source for anything of any real substance. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the study extrapolated the results of a literacy test, to relate to their work with basic geometry?

I could accept basing the efficacy of a study on a standardised test if the focus of the study was specifically related to the test, eg working on improving spelling for example, but in this case, as in most of the cases of this kind, they make no effort whatsoever to relate the standardised test to the actual nature of the use of the devices. Which tells you a great deal about the study, that they didn't feel it worthwhile to actually describe what they are using the iPads for, which would seem to be glorified textbooks, which would explain why they felt standardised test would be a valid measure. All they are concerned about is to measure the extent to which students have absorbed specific surface content, without any consideration about deeper conceptual development or creativity and all those other soft skills that really do matter much more.

So, why 1:1?

Whenever I encounter someone who is under the impression that providing students with their own device is a little, well, excessive, I strongly suspect two things:

1. They don't have to share the digital device/s (more likely 2 or 3) they rely on, and they take the obvious benefits of this for granted.

2. They are making some profoundly dubious assumptions about the way we encourage students to use these devices.

You can be sure that any advocate for shared devices never shares their own device 50:50. Can you imagine how far you would get in your daily work if you had to share your laptop 50:50 with a colleague in the office? You can be sure that the same person so gleefully anticipating a social nirvana where all of these students happily share their devices is suffering from a profound case of media bias, or device disorder. I’m sure the same person would never countenance asking the same students to share a pencil, or a paintbrush. How about an exercise book? You start from the front, and I’ll start from the back... These devices are all tools, very few of which were purpose built for a classroom, but all of which can be very successfully repurposed for an educational context by skilled teachers. I find teachers that are blasé about the need for students to have their own devices tells me more about the lack of importance they associate with the device than it does about the use of it.

The way you use these devices has profound implications for the desirable ratio of devices to students; a classroom where all the iPads are used for is glorified textbooks, or for educational "games" and skill drill, then sharing one iPad between five, or ten or even twenty really is not a problem. But a classroom where the teacher expects kids to actually create artefacts that are meaningful over time, is a classroom that benefits from the lowest possible ratio of student to device.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that a 1:1 context is a prerequisite for successful learning, many teachers all over the world, do amazing things everyday with limited resources, but that doesn’t mean that this paucity of resources is something they find preferable. Anyone who thinks so, clearly has never attempted to use these devices themselves.

Allow me to illustrate with an analogy.

Cycling is good for you, it’s also much less harmful for the environment than an aeroplane. So next time you want to travel between, say London and Singapore, don’t fly, cycle. ...

This logic only makes sense if you never had to actually travel between London and Singapore yourself (and if you’re not in hurry). There is something to be said as well for determination, I have a good friend who shares his laptop with the 24 kids in his class, on a rota basis. Do they benefit? Yes. Is the sharing beneficial for them? Maybe. Is this his preferred arrangement? Of course not.

Back to the bicycle.

Would I ever countenance the idea of cycling from London to Singapore? No ... unless that was the only way I was ever going to visit Asia, (and I had plenty of time, and a very good bicycle). Consciousness of the desirability of the goal has a direct bearing on one's determination to persevere despite the obstacles that may be present. Would it be good for me? Yes. So am I going to do it? No. I am not. Well, maybe. For many years, teachers who are profoundly aware of the value of designing experiences for their students to enhance their learning with digital tools have persevered despite many obstacles to make this a reality for their students, but would they prefer 1:1? Of course they do. How do I know? I was one, more than once. UWCSEA is the first school I've ever had the pleasure to work at, that has such a phenomenal level of resourcing, resourcing that is 'normal' here would be considered extraordinary in many, if not most other schools in the world. In my previous schools, scavenging abandoned computers, salvaging parts, and spending hours beyond number to build a rudimentary ‘lab’ for my students was a frequent experience. Why? I knew it was a tool that would considerably benefit their learning, and my teaching. I was wrestling to enhance the learning of my students in the early days at the turn of the century when ‘TEL’ still was yet to become a ‘thing’.

1:1 works better - shall I count the ways?

When my school announced five years ago, that we were embarking on a tech enhanced learning (TEL) initiative, it was assumed then that the 1:1 ratio only applied for older students, middle school and up. While the ratio of devices in the Primary School was going to be significantly increased, from about 5:1 to more like 2:1, the intention was never to provide 1:1 in the primary school as well. So what changed that situation? I did.

Can we work with shared devices? Yes. Can we work better when we have our own device? Yes. Interestingly the main pressure to go 1:1 came from our teachers, even when we expanded to a 2:1 ratio, the more effective they became at utilising digital tech, the more ridiculous expecting the kids to share devices became.

The truth is that the benefits of 1:1 have really surprised me, I was kind of oblivious of how powerful that really is, just from a logistical standpoint. With shared devices it is all too common for students to accidentally delete each other's work which is quite soul destroying, and especially with video editing in the junior school attempting to work on a project over several weeks is impossible with a shared machine. This means that any creating on the device (the most important use) has to be confined to short simple activities that can be started and completed within one lesson, this really does diminish the power of those tools.

This means that the main reason for going 1:1 is not really about two kids needing to use the device at the same time, although that is a factor, it's about valuing and protecting the importance of the artefacts created by each individual child. The biggest advantage I found by going 1:1 is to do with the fact that the work on that device cannot be accidentally tampered or deleted by a well-meaning (or maybe not so well-meaning) friend. If all the kids use the device for is shallow tasks like skill and drill apps, taking tests, and passively consuming media, then clearly sharing them is less of an issue. However, I think this is actually highlights a bigger problem! If we are encouraging our kids to do meaningful creative work on these devices then they will have media saved on the device that they would be upset about if it was accidentally deleted by a classmate.

Not to mention the issue of 'ownership', a child who is responsible for their own device, apart from the obvious personal social merits of having to take that responsibility, is also a child who feels like the work on there is work that is all theirs. This aspect became quickly apparent, kids really do benefit from their "ownership" of one device, including in ways we hadn’t anticipated, such as: customising it so that it operates the way they want it to; using a picture of their face for the wallpaper; being able to actually choose to share content on their iPads with their parents directly, this is the kind of thing that a one-to-one environment would make very straightforward but that they shared environment would be quite difficult. This even extends to the physical device itself—sharing ‘their’ device with their parents at parent teacher conference means there is something quite empowering about that kind of "ownership" even at such a young age. This aspect encourages a sense of responsibility that is powerful in terms of 'digital citizenship'; such as the fact that the teacher can expect the student for example to curate and manage their camera roll with their media responsibly; there is no way the student can evade responsibility by blaming other students who also use the iPad—a common issue with shared devices.

To summarise, 1:1 matters because:

• access to device whenever needed
• opportunity to do extended tasks
• simpler logistics, no more loan systems to manage
• organisation - curation and management of the device
• ownership - personalise the device to work they you like it
• responsibility - no abdication, your battery, your files, your work, your way
• security - the fruits of your labours, safe from prying eyes and fingers

So when I encounter people who are under the impression that 1:1 is excessive (the implication in the article) I know there is an assumption behind these ideas that the digital tools are used so infrequently and so ineffectively (ie skill drill, and games) that expecting kids to share them is no big deal, but in classrooms where these tools are effectively integrated and used to record, reflect and create, they are actually very difficult to share, not because of a lack of willingness to do so, but because both kids actually need to use the device at the same time, and really value the content they are curating and collecting on their own device.  You can be sure the journalist who wrote the article wasn’t using a machine she was sharing; why?

She uses it to create. 

1:1 - Why?

1:1 via edtechteacher.org

Every now and then I come across an article that, while on the surface level seems fairly innocuous, causes me incredible consternation, articles like this,

"Kids Who Have to Share iPads Learn Better Than Kids Who Have Their Own".

The article is not a new one, but like many articles of its ilk, it has a habit of resurfacing periodically, as it did this week, finally motivating me to put fingers to keys.

There are so many things wrong with the assumptions made by the writer of this article, that it’s hard to know where to start. So in the absence of any better course of action, I’ll start at the beginning.

Firstly can we all just assume that of course sharing is a good thing, and so by implication is learning to share, but the truth is that it's the sharing that is beneficial not the device being shared, I see kids sharing and collaborating all the time even when using their own screens; the extent to which this happens is all to do with the classroom culture carefully crafted by a caring teacher and nothing to do with the nature of the particular item.

Secondly, what is the evidence basis for the the findings of the research? Performance in “a standardized literacy test at the end of the year compared to the beginning”. Oh, that’s okay then; God forbid we should have any other metric in school for judging the efficacy of any initiative other than a test, and I hate to imagine what the nature of this test was, but something tells me it involved a lot of multiple choice questions, maybe even a few cloze passages...   I loathe the way so many of these kinds of studies assume that standardised tests as the measure for success for everything is acceptable, it's not acceptable it's completely unacceptable, not to mention completely irrelevant... Just because it's easy to measure doesn't make it valuable. There are plenty of other people who have done a better job than I could do here, starting with the magnificent Alfie Kohn.

An improvement of 28% v 24% in a study of 352 students really is not statistically significant, despite what the study's author says, another reason why we don't rely on one source for anything of any real substance. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the study extrapolated the results of a literacy test, to relate to their work with basic geometry?

I could possibly accept basing the efficacy of a study on a standardised test if the focus of the study was specifically related to the test, eg working on improving spelling for example, but in this case, as in most of the cases of this kind, they make no effort whatsoever to relate the standardised test to the actual nature of the use of the devices. Which tells you a great deal about the study, that they didn't feel it worthwhile to actually describe what they are using the iPads for, which would seem to be glorified textbooks, which would explain why they felt standardised test would be a valid measure. All they are concerned about is to measure the extent to which students have absorbed specific surface content, without any consideration about deep conceptual development or creativity and all those other soft skills that really do matter much more. You see a classroom where all the iPads are used for is glorified textbooks, or for educational "games" and skill drill, then sharing one iPad between five, or ten or even twenty really is not a problem. But a classroom where the teacher expects kids to actually create things that are meaningful over time is a classroom that benefits from the lowest possible ratio of student to device.

What has all this got to do with 1:1?

Whenever I encounter someone who is under the impression that providing students with their own device is a little, well, excessive, I know there is something profoundly dubious about the assumptions they make about the way we encourage students to use these devices. The truth is you can be sure that any advocate for shared devices never shares their own device 50:50. Can you imagine how far you would get in your daily work if you had to share your laptop 50:50 with a colleague in the office? You can be sure that the same person so gleefully anticipating a social nirvana where all of these students happily share their devices is suffering from a profound case of media bias, or device disorder. I’m sure the same person would never countenance asking the same students to share a pencil, or a paintbrush. How about an exercise book? You start from the front, and I’ll start from the back... These devices are all tools, very few of which were purpose built for a classroom, but all of which can be very successfully repurposed for an educational context by skilled teachers. I find teachers that are blasé about the need for students to have their own devices tells me more about the lack of importance they associate with the device than it does about the use of it.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that a 1:1 context is a prerequisite for successful learning, many teachers all over the world, do amazing things everyday with limited resources, but that doesn’t mean that this paucity of resources is something they find preferable! Anyone who thinks so, clearly has never attempted to use these devices themselves.

Allow me to illustrate with an analogy.

Cycling is good for you, it’s also much less harmful for the environment than an aeroplane. So next time you want to travel between, say London and Singapore, don’t fly, cycle!

This logic only makes sense if you never had to actually travel between London and Singapore yourself (and if you’re not in hurry). There is something to be said as well for determination, I have a good friend who shares his laptop with the 24 kids in his class, on a rota basis. Do they benefit? Yes. Is the sharing beneficial for them? Maybe. Is this his preferred arrangement? Of course not.

Back to the bicycle.

Would I ever countenance the idea of cycling from London to Singapore? No ... unless that was the only way I was ever going to visit Asia, and time was no object. Consciousness of the desirability of the goal has a direct bearing on one's determination to persevere despite the obstacles that may be present. Would it be good for me? Yes. So am I going to do it? No. I am not. Well, maybe. For many years, teachers who are profoundly aware of the value of designing experiences for their students to enhance their learning with digital tools have persevered despite many obstacles to make this a reality for their students, but would they prefer 1:1? Of course they do. How do I know? I was one, more than once. Scavenging abandoned computers, salvaging parts, and spending hours beyond number to build a rudimentary ‘lab’ for my students was a frequent experience for me when I was wrestling to enhance the learning of my students in the early days at the turn of the century when ‘TEL’ still was yet to become a ‘thing’.

1:1 works better - shall I count the ways?

When my school announced five years ago, that we were embarking on a tech enhanced learning (TEL) initiative, it was assumed that the 1:1 ratio only applied for older students, middle school and up. While the ratio of devices in the Primary School was going to be increased, from about 5:1 to more like 2:1, the intention was never to provide 1:1 in the primary school as well. So what changed their minds? I did.

Can we work with shared devices? Yes. Can we work better when we have our own device? Yes. Interestingly the main pressure to go 1:1 came from our teachers, even when we expanded to a 2:1 ratio, the more effective they became at utilising digital tech, the more ridiculous expecting the kids to share devices became.

The truth is that the benefits of 1:1 have really surprised me, I was kind of oblivious of how powerful that really is, just from a logistical standpoint. With shared devices it is all too common for students to accidentally delete each other's work which is quite soul destroying, and especially with video editing in the junior school attempting to work on a project over several weeks is impossible with a shared machine. This means that any creating on the device (the most important use) has to be confined to short simple activities that can be started and completed within one lesson, this really does diminish the power of those tools.

This means that the main reason for going 1:1 is not really about two kids needing to use the device at the same time, although that is a factor, it's about honouring and protecting the importance of the media created by each individual child. The biggest advantage I found by going 1:1 is to do with the fact that the work on that device cannot be accidentally tampered or deleted by a well-meaning (or maybe not so well-meaning) friend. If all the kids use the device for is shallow tasks like skill and drill apps, taking tests, and passively consuming media, then clearly sharing them is less of  an issue. However I think this is actually highlights a bigger problem! If we are encouraging our kids to do meaningful creative work on these devices and they will have media saved on the device that they would be upset about if it was accidentally deleted by a classmate.


Not to mention the issue of 'ownership', a child who is responsible for their own device, apart from the obvious personal social merits of having to take that responsibility, is also a child who feels like the work on there is work that is all theirs. This aspect became quickly apparent, kids really do benefit from their "ownership" of one device, including in ways we hadn’t anticipated, such as: customising it so that it operates the way they want it to; using a picture of their face for the wallpaper; being able to actually choose to share content on their iPads with their parents directly, this is the kind of thing that a one-to-one environment would make very straightforward but that they shared environment would be quite difficult. This even extends to the physical device itself—sharing ‘their’ device with their parents at parent teacher conference means there is something quite empowering about that kind of "ownership" even at such a young age. This aspect encourages a sense of responsibility that is powerful in terms of 'digital citizenship'; such as the fact that the teacher can expect the student for example to curate and manage their camera roll with their media responsibly; there is no way the student can evade responsibility by blaming other students who also use the iPad—a common issue with shared devices.

So when I encounter people who are under the impression that 1:1 is excessive (the implication in this article) I know there is an assumption behind these ideas that the digital tools are used so infrequently and so ineffectively (ie skill drill, and games) that expecting kids to share them is no big deal, but in classrooms where these tools are effectively integrated and used to record, reflect and create, they are actually very difficult to share, not because of a lack of willingness to do so, but because both kids actually need to use the device at the same time, and really value the content they are curating and collecting on their own device.  You can be sure the journalist who wrote the article wasn’t using a machine she was sharing; why?

She uses it to create. 

Laptops and Lowest Common Denominators

A colleague shared the outcome of recent research into the efficacy of 1:1 laptop schools, more specifically it was a meta-analysis of 10 studies that examine the impact of laptop programs on students’ academic achievement.

I read it with mixed feelings. On the one hand the fact that the researchers concluded that schools where students have their own laptops see a "significantly positive average effect sizes in English, writing, mathematics, and science" was encouraging. They felt that "the impact of laptop programs on general teaching and learning processes and perceptions was generally positive".

So that's good then. Right?

Well, no; not really.

I couldn't help but notice that their expectations of the actual use of these devices was, to put it mildly, far from tapping into the true potential of these devices. This is despite their inspirational opening clarion call to change the world,

"We believe that the affordances of computers for learning and knowledge production are radically different from those of radio, television, and film, which explains why computers, unlike those previous technologies, are bound to have a very different educational fate from the one suggested by Cuban (1993a, p 185), who wrote that “computer meets classroom: classroom wins.”

So exactly what uses do they have in mind? How do they envisage these radically different affordances? By inspiring the creative expression of learning through the exciting synergies between video, image, text, audio and the deft analysis and application of data?

No, they see the main affordances of these devices in terms of use "to write and revise papers, conduct Internet searches, and engage in personalized instruction and assessment using educational software or online tools". (p 2)

What? That's it? These devices hold the potential to radically transform their world, but let's just use them to type up reports (so they're nice and neat), Google stuff, and take online tests.

How depressing.

Then it gets worse. Having applied the law of the lowest possible expectations of these tools, they proceed to use the worst possible measure to determine their efficacy. We find ourselves in the familiar territory of, when faced with the option of assessing those aspects of learning that are the most important (creativity, solutions, innovation etc), but of course the most difficult to qualify, instead they opt to measure the aspects of learning that are easiest to quantify, with, yes, you guessed it, standardised tests:

"quantitative findings of the impact on students’ academic achievement. [...] Measurements of academic achievement were standardized assessments or norm-referenced district- or school-wide tests." (p 5)

So the measure of efficacy all boils down to that which can be measured on a standardised test. How depressing, and how inappropriate for a medium as rich as that of digital technologies. Like judging a ballerinas dancing ability, based on her spelling. So we use them ineffectively, then assess the efficacy of their use in ways that are utterly unsuitable. Is this really what we expect when we talk about 'technology enhanced learning' in 1:1 environments?

I sincerely hope not. I tell you what though, it would make my job a lot easier if I did.

To be fair to this study, they do accept that there are problems with the ways they are assessing the efficacy of these devices, "studies on this topic have largely done a poor job of assessing learning outcomes that are not well captured by current iterations of standardized tests. As the United States and other countries move to more sophisticated forms of standardized assessment, these new measures may be better aligned with the learning goals believed to be associated with laptop use." (p 25)

I have to wonder whether the corporate world is as obsessed with trying to validate the influence of digital technologies in the workplace as we are with attempting to defend them in the classroom? Do any of us really believe that the corporate world would be better off without digital technologies? Then why would we would we believe that classrooms would be better off without them? Do we really believe the corporate world would spend the millions if not billions it must cost every year to maintain their IT infrastructures if they did not feel they was essential, important, effective?

Don't Settle

As it is I'm not prepared to settle for a lowest common denominator approach, where we abandon any attempts at using these devices anywhere near their potential, and instead settle for using them in the ways that are the easiest, and therefore the most common, even if they are far from being the most effective. By easiest/least I mean ways of working that most closely replicates the traditional approaches to learning that were the norm before the advent of the digital revolution; writing becomes typing, and researching in the library becomes Googling, the results of which we present, in writing. That's it.

Vitamin D[igital] Video, Image, Text, Audio, Data. VITAD.

No, these laptops should be used to create in all five domains, not just text, but image, video, audio and data, and all sorts of overlaps between them. These technologies should exploit all of the attributes that digital tools excel at; situated learning/working, access to global communities/experts, multimodal artefacts, mutable work flows, sharing and collaborating on content using social networks.

In the paper, they state,

"Contrary to Cuban’s (2003) argument that computers are “oversold and underused” (p 179) in schools, laptop environments are reshaping many aspects of education in K–12 schools." (p 24)

But the truth is that if all they are exploiting is their use is as word processors and web browsers, these machines are definitely underused. I guess this could be described as giving up on transformation and focusing on amplification instead, if I'm honest, is this a bad thing? It would certainly make my job easier... Maybe having tech being oversold and underused is better than having them ignored and unused.

I guess the question that I need to wrestle with is, if I need to lower my expectations... Maybe if we just focus on using one domain effectively (text), we'll still see benefits in terms of learning, but perhaps more effectively and consistently—less is more? Perhaps, but I doubt it; focusing on just one domain out of five strikes me as making as much sense as buying a car and using it to keep you dry in the rain, or cool in the sun.

Useful? Yes.

Appropriate? Maybe.

Ideal and Effective? ... 😕🤔😬


Zheng, B., Warschauer, M., Lin, C. H., & Chang, C. (2016). Learning in One-to-One Laptop Environments A Meta-Analysis and Research Synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 0034654316628645.