At first glance the district I work in is perfect in that there is an abundance of technology. There is a projector, interactive board, document camera and at least one student computer in every classroom. Every teacher in district has a laptop loaded with software: Microsoft Office, iLife, document camera software and interactive board software. So you might ask, “what is the problem?”
There are two problems, the district decides needs of teachers without asking the teachers and has centralized server set and maintained at district office (it used to be the lab managed responsibility to set up and maintain school servers).
The district deciding the needs of the teachers has a two fold result; teachers don’t have a “stack” in it and many times the teachers are not getting the equipment, programs and/or training they need for their program. Putting a projector/interactive board in a reading specialist room is a waste of resources. The reading specialist works with 1 to 4 students at a time, they don’t see the need to work at a board feeling it is not necessary. The district has installed the same set up in the speech therapist room, resource teacher’s rooms and the fitness room. Many times a project would have made the most sense.
Professional development works much the same way, with all good intentions the district puts out a massive amount of courses that the teachers can sign up for and also receive CPDUs. The classes maybe large with speakers that don’t know the teachers and goes at a relatively fast pace; great for the teacher previously comfortable with technology and probably already uses it in their classroom. This scenario is not a good experience for the teacher not uses in the classroom and would like to start. It is also not a good situation if one of the goals is to get these teachers using technology.
The school servers use to be maintained by the lab managers, allowing the school to set up and manage them according to the schools needs. The district has centralized them in the past several years. The problem with that is having one person deal with that many students creates a situation where it is impossible to take individual needs into account. All students must have the same formula for login (student first initial, middle initial, last name), great if the kindergartener or special needs student doesn’t have a long last name. This arrangement can’t take into account that a teacher wants to do a project and needs a particular account set up for her students, allowing them to share documents. Having the servers centralized does not allow the school to configure the server to that schools needs.
Having an abundant amount of technology in a school does not guarantee that the students will have a meaningful experience with technology.
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