Marsden11 Posted August 5, 2003 Share Posted August 5, 2003 Don't get me started on schools and technology. Thankfully now at 49, I'm retired. I worked in both public and private school districts. I worked with folks from Applied Materials, KLA Tencor, Etec Systems and Lam Research. These high tech folks are beggin schools to get into technology; to get kids started and involved in technology early... so it is not in their juniors years in college they finally figure out what they want to do with their lives. I have seen computer teachers teaching 8th graders how to indent in a "business" letter. Who indents anymore? It took most of these kids a week to complete the 1 page assignment... Or district managers pushing multimedia programs as the end all be all for students and technology... when the students did not know how to surf the Web or even type with any speed besides hunt and peck! "Gosh darn you have to use a Mac to do it because PCs suck!"I have seen principals slash technology bugedts ($25,000) by 75% because they felt that was too much for the sake of technology. I had principals ask for their old Power PCs back because they did not like their new iMacs... As a parent of a child in school I still have to fill out reems of paper each year because the school only knows how to do it one way... the old way... no one knows how to think outside the box...I saw schools purchase MS Office for Mac @ $15 bucks per seat (very cheap) install on all school knowledge workers desktops and train everyone and convert all school docs to Office for Mac and after I left the program schools were reverting back to the old Mac apps and abandoning the progress made after years of work. Because no one was there to keep the flame burning... No one had any vision...I have seen inner city public scholls spend hundreds of thousands per school on PC upgrades and purchase regular business desktop PCs only to march on down to the school board and ask for millions to build steel cages to secure them to the desktop and to still have kids jam whatever was available in the floppy drive slots and break most of the CD trays within the first month of opperation. They could have purchased hardware that could be locked away in closets and bolted simple boxes that had plugs for KVM and network cables. Hardly anything to break or service. Could not do that... too revolutionary and that is not the way we work around here... I have heard all the excuses...I've seen a inner city high school with 20 servers and had to carry around a list of passwords that only worked on half of them. Seen several groups come through the school computer labs on a regular basis and re-image the lab machines only to be re-imaged by another group a few days later and then re-imaged again because these different technology groups claimed the machines were theirs... I can't tell you how many projects were planned, approved, implemented and then abandoned because someone took another job within the schools or left all together. I have seen a Math lab with all new computers all working one week and the next half are useless because someone thought it would be cool to pour soda down the back of the monitors. Then the key to unlock the PCs and monitors disappears and the dead machines just sit there while the tech guys stand there scratching their heads because none of them were packing bolt cutters or sawzalls...That paticular high school would take in 800 10th graders and graduate 70 kids in the end and be praised for doing such a fantastic job... ( this school district was also recently taken over by the state by running up a 100+ million dollar defecit. This same school district spent 2 million on a technology audit one year only to misplace the info the next year... 400+ schools wired to the hilt with Cat5 and fiber and guess what? Half the installed fiber is still dark because the contractors that pulled it, never bother to fully test it but did manage to get their contracts paid 100%. I saw teachers attacked by students and nothing happened. You would not believe the "stuff" I witnessed...Personally, I think "educators " should not be allowed to run schools or school districts. They should hire business people with a mind to run them like businesses... profit or loss. Restore order in schools and throw out the kids who would rather cause trouble than learn. I have watched the city counsel debate with the school board over placing real cops in the schools instead of rent-a-cops because many were concerned that putting in real cops might criminalize certain kids whose behavior was over the edge... A kid beating another kid over the head with fire hose nozzel seems pretty criminal to me but others don't see it that way... so the rent-a-cops remain...A total mess any way you slice it. Our country is going to end up third rate in technology or worse... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted August 5, 2003 Share Posted August 5, 2003 All I can say Marsden11 is I am glad I am not where you were. Where I taught in Missouri the superintendent aggressively pursued getting the latest technology and training folks to use it. It was not unusual for me to turn around in my classroom and find him standing in the doorway listening and watching what was going on. He gave me free reign to decide what to teach and size of my classes. I also had the teachers coming in and spending their planning periods working in my classroom so I could answer their questions as they used the computers. All of this was in a little country school with a total of 400 students in all grades from kindergarten to graduation. It was ideal as far as teaching. I got new computers every year and then my old ones were passed on to the classrooms. This was because I always pushed the computers to capacity. Now in North Carolina I am tied into state testing that keeps me on a very focused path. The good news is that they have moved light-years ahead from when I left N.C. seven years ago. I had to fight to get new equipment last year (I had the oldest in the district.) I think I got all new equipment because they saw the computers were taken care of and there were zero incidents such as you described. The students know I will not tolerate anything like that. If a school district has no control, such as you describe, then they deserve to be taken over by the state. Everywhere I have been they have implemented a five-year technology plan with annual updates designed by teachers, administrators, parents, and businesses in the community. That keeps groups coming in and reimaging the computers every week. I find it hard to believe that a district would not have a clear cut line of control for the computers with administrative controls limited to just a very few. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonicDragon Posted August 5, 2003 Share Posted August 5, 2003 All I can say Marsden11 is I am glad I am not where you were. Where I taught in Missouri the superintendent aggressively pursued getting the latest technology and training folks to use it. It was not unusual for me to turn around in my classroom and find him standing in the doorway listening and watching what was going on. He gave me free reign to decide what to teach and size of my classes. I also had the teachers coming in and spending their planning periods working in my classroom so I could answer their questions as they used the computers. All of this was in a little country school with a total of 400 students in all grades from kindergarten to graduation. It was ideal as far as teaching. I got new computers every year and then my old ones were passed on to the classrooms. This was because I always pushed the computers to capacity.We actually spend a good deal on tech in the school here too. We are a public school, and our bugdet isn't very high, but we find someway to get them somehow. Unfortunatly, we do not have the best teaching system when it comes to computers. Actually, this year, there are no computer clases in the highschool at all. They are taking a year off to think about their computer program In the lower grades, the system is pretty good. Lots of exposure to computers. Unfortunaly, the teachers at our school do not have the liberty of teaching what they want. We take the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assesment System -- MA standardized testing). So almost all teaching goes into helping us pass those. And since computers aren't really on the test, we don't have much of a computer program anymore :(Hopefully we will next year. Maybe i can help start something up. But, that's what i've got you all for This is the perfect class Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted April 26, 2004 Share Posted April 26, 2004 (* Topic merged . . . . . by Bruno ) From Fred Langa's latest newsletter : http://www.xpde.com/shots.php. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted April 26, 2004 Share Posted April 26, 2004 oops! I should have known to check 1st. Sorry. Thanks Bruno. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.