I recall visiting a middle-school classroom on Swan’s Island in 2003. The teacher sat behind her desk looking at a new Apple laptop, thanks to legislation passed in 2001 that would ensure one-to-one computing for Maine’s 5th and 6th grade students. Sitting there, she wondered aloud about the best way to put the computer to work for her kids. Meanwhile, students sat working at short round tables with their computers toggling between preinstalled software programs, already pushing the limits of the new machines-they were clearly digital natives.

Later that year, at the biennial Island Teachers Conference, nearly 100 Maine island teachers talked about the problem they now had. They all had laptops thanks to then-Governor Angus King’s bold new vision for education and economic development, yet few had knowledge of how best to integrate this technology into the classroom. Although many teachers around the nation had just begun to imagine how to unlock the potential of deploying laptops in the classroom, the teachers at the conference were extremely clear about what worked in island schools:

1)   Build on island community strengths rather than what island communities don’t have.

2)   Be open to learning from students when they have important knowledge to share.

3)   Island schools are a resource in the community-they can help answer questions that are important to the community.

4)   Inquiries taken on by teachers have to be relevant across the curriculum-from the arts to the sciences. After all, what other choice does a teacher have when they might have one other helper in their k-8 school that services six to twelve students.

These four basic points about what works in island schools, along with the onset of one-to-one computing captured the attention of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF wondered if this could become a national rural education model for integrating technology into classrooms and exciting students about technology careers. The Island Institute became the vehicle for testing this hypothesis winning an education research grant in 2005 called Community for Rural Education, Stewardship and Technology (CREST http://crest.islandinstitute.org).

Guided by an island teacher advisory board, over the past five years we have worked with 17 island and remote coastal schools, assisting them in developing a model for rural education. The model that the teachers came to has the following characteristics:

1)   Technology education experiences should be non-hierarchical, meaning that teachers and students learn along side one another and become mutual resources in the classroom for integrating new technologies into the curriculum;

2)   They should be place-based; schools apply technology to answering interesting local questions. Why don’t we have clamming on the island any more (North Haven)? What happened to our America’s Cup sailing team (Stonington)? Where are the sensitive ecosystems along the ATV trials (Washington Academy)? How can we capture our fishing heritage for the local historical society (St. George)? Can we help understand deer tick concentrations on our island (Islesboro)?

3)   Rural teachers need support that can be structured as a learning community where opportunities to share challenges and solutions enable people to gain the confidence to deploy new technologies in the classroom

While the Island Institute may have been a vehicle for testing teachers’ ideas, the laptop was a vehicle of another sort. Teachers wanted to use their computers to teach new (at the time) geographic information systems (GIS) mapping technologies, documentary film making (or digital ethnography), and website development.

Each of these areas of interest are technologically rich in their own right, but perhaps far more interesting is that each is a means of self representation-they enable remote communities to tell their own stories through maps, images and text, on their own terms, and to push it out to the world.

What we all learned along the way is that while learning how to make maps, films and websites, students were also learning key 21st century job skills. Critical thinking was deployed as students considered the power of organizing images and words through video to evoke specific emotions about issues that were pertinent to their communities. Project management skills were developed as students and teachers worked to integrate project plans developed over the summer into the classroom. Data management skills underpinned all of the types of technology deployed. Hundreds of map layers, audio and image files, coding for web pages, all had to be managed for retrieval over the five years of the project.

The NSF now recognizes CREST as a national model for rural technology education. The evidence is overwhelming. Independent evaluation of this model shows that 82% of teachers in the participating schools are now comfortable deploying new technologies in the classroom, across the curriculum. And while evidence is just emerging from longitudinal evaluations, it appears that these experiences are significantly shaping students interests in pursuing technology careers.

When Angus King introduced the idea for the Maine Laptop Initiative he received all kinds of push back. One state senator famously emailed him that, “if you want to do something for the kids in my district then buy them each a chainsaw.” King knew that this thinking had the potential to hold Maine back, whereas laptops had the potential to unlock access to a more prosperous future. The island and remote coastal teachers in Maine have demonstrated to the nation how to achieve this vision in our rural schools, for our kids, and for the future of rural communities.

For a full audio download of Angus King’s keynote address to the CREST students and teachers, please visit www.islandinstitute.org/videos/Former-Maine-Governor-Angus-King-speaks-on-education/13957/

Rob Snyder is Executive Vice President at the Island Institute.