I love my tech guys, honestly I do. There are times however, when I want to say to them, "you know, this would be so much easier if I could just....this, that, whatever, whenever..." And if I'm that frustrated, I can't even begin to imagine (well, actually, I do know) how our students feel.
Music project? Sorry, the site to get your song lyrics is blocked. Social studies saved to your email because you couldn't get the network to save it to your H drive? Sorry, you're not allowed to check your personal email at school. And the list goes on...
I can override or request access to certain pages, because I know how and I have admin privileges. But, not all of our staff do (and none of our students can), and even if they did, Big Brother is watching. Oh, I'm not saying that it's the worst thing in the world, but whatever happened to starting from a point of trust? If we're not trusting our staff to know what's appropriate, and what's not, how are we ever going to trust our students? And if we don't trust them, how can we ever move forward with technology integration in our curriculum?
On another but somewhat related note, for the first time in our school's history (that I know of), I taught a unit on Internet safety to my 4th graders. You would have thought that I had given them a gift of, well, I don't know, but they took off with it. We had intense and meaningful conversations about chat rooms, how to handle inappropriate situations, personal information... Wow! The unit wrapped up with a skit the students wrote and directed in themselves - add the Flip video camera and we had an awesome PSA! Which reminds me, I wonder if the tech guys would let me post that on our District web page? Hmmm...
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It is very frustrating for the students - I know my younger son has come home discouraged and feeling helpless on any number of occasions because of work he couldn't save, or couldn't find again, or entire class periods spent simply attempting to find a computer that would let him log on. I have no doubt that the IT people are trying, but it doesn't seem like it should be so hard for the students. No wonder people question the value of technology in the schools!
ReplyDeleteYou did give your class a gift - the gift of acknowledging value in something they care about. It sounds like they all had a great time and I bet they learned a lot!