Honestly, I am overwhelmed by technology each and every day. However, when I think of overwhelmed I do not think of information as detailed in the video Information overload and technology, I think of systems challenges with the hardware at our disposal.
Three years ago I helped push for a netbook lab in my classroom. We were a school of 500 kids with one computer lab and I was observing teachers squabble and fight, and ultimately give up on using the lab as they knew they would probably not get time to complete the task (hence overwhelmed teachers and in turn overwhelmed me). After much cage rattling and a heavy dose of help from Avi Luxenburg, we were the first school in the district to test drive these new carts, of which there are now a couple of dozen around the district.
These days I pretty much have the netbook lab at my disposal giving me the chance to try all kinds of new and wonderful things. The downside of that is, with each new program or moviemaking session comes a whole new set of challenges. Kids lose their video, we don’t have the correct codecs, some computers have the updated version of a program and some do not. The list goes on. Recently, my (sorry, I tend to refer to them as mine:)) netbooks have had a 50% success rate of logging in and finding student L:drives or some other malady. I finally got to the point where I contacted our tech help desk and just today sat down for a few hours and problem solved some solutions with our district tech..
My point here is that those of us willing or wanting to become the ‘techie’ in their schools must be prepared to spend a great deal of time keeping up to date, supporting others when they are struggling, as well as modelling to students the frustrations and problem solving situations that come with using technology. Technology can offer many brilliant avenues; however, it can often come at a price to our mental health. I wonder if this is true for other specialties ie. Music and French?
On a different note, I found JP Rangaswami’s talk Information is food quite ironic as I too have related much of my teaching to food. You may notice that my Weebly site is centered on food and might have heard me talk about my four-point scale being centered around my Grandmother’s chili sauce. It was comforting to know that there are others who relate food to education, technology and life in general.
Three years ago I helped push for a netbook lab in my classroom. We were a school of 500 kids with one computer lab and I was observing teachers squabble and fight, and ultimately give up on using the lab as they knew they would probably not get time to complete the task (hence overwhelmed teachers and in turn overwhelmed me). After much cage rattling and a heavy dose of help from Avi Luxenburg, we were the first school in the district to test drive these new carts, of which there are now a couple of dozen around the district.
These days I pretty much have the netbook lab at my disposal giving me the chance to try all kinds of new and wonderful things. The downside of that is, with each new program or moviemaking session comes a whole new set of challenges. Kids lose their video, we don’t have the correct codecs, some computers have the updated version of a program and some do not. The list goes on. Recently, my (sorry, I tend to refer to them as mine:)) netbooks have had a 50% success rate of logging in and finding student L:drives or some other malady. I finally got to the point where I contacted our tech help desk and just today sat down for a few hours and problem solved some solutions with our district tech..
My point here is that those of us willing or wanting to become the ‘techie’ in their schools must be prepared to spend a great deal of time keeping up to date, supporting others when they are struggling, as well as modelling to students the frustrations and problem solving situations that come with using technology. Technology can offer many brilliant avenues; however, it can often come at a price to our mental health. I wonder if this is true for other specialties ie. Music and French?
On a different note, I found JP Rangaswami’s talk Information is food quite ironic as I too have related much of my teaching to food. You may notice that my Weebly site is centered on food and might have heard me talk about my four-point scale being centered around my Grandmother’s chili sauce. It was comforting to know that there are others who relate food to education, technology and life in general.