Classrooms for the Future.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)

In painting all initiatives that include mass distribution of computers in schools with the same broad brush stroke, Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn ("How Do We Trans form Our Schools?" features, Summer 2008) risk dismissing the kind of true innovations that are occurring in Penn sylvania's classrooms.

Over the last two years, Pennsylvania's Classrooms for the Future pro gram has put 100,000 laptops on student desks in high school English, math, science, and social studies classrooms. But Classrooms for the Future is not a technology initiative; it is a strategy to transform classroom instruction.

Professional development, not the technology itself, is the key to success for the Classrooms for the Future pro gram. Teachers receive two days of hands-on training and then participate in a minimum of 30 hours of additional professional development on mandated content each year. Training is conducted onsite via a teacher coach, online in facilitated courses, and in regional meetings of participating districts. The role of the coach is to sup port teachers to effectively integrate the laptops and other ...