Tech in My Placement

While I knew that technology is an important resource to teachers, in the chaos of being a new student intern trying to get adjusted to a new environment, technology was one of the last things on my mind, The survey really pushed me to focus my observations and find out about what resources really are available to us. The school I am placed in is interesting because it is technically a school but shares a building, a main office and principal with another school. So it's an interesting place to work in, especially with regards to allocation of resources.

At the advent of my placement, one of the first complaints I heard the staff struggle with was technology. At the general staff meeting, I heard concerns that computers were not distributed effectively; some rooms had too many, and others had none. In addition, the technology issues were handled by the district as a whole, and our school was not provided with a technology office for the school. So any technology change requests, or even issues with login information had to be sent to the district via a "help ticket". It was very inefficient, and created a lot of unnecessary frustration and delays. In addition, the printers were not working, which means teachers cannot print out their assignments to make copies. Teachers who don't have access to a printer at home were struggling, and I witnessed some collaboration between teachers to help each other out. I am actually not even sure the issue is resolved till now.

The school does have several copy machines available, and although they keep jamming, they generally get the job done. It's a great resource, and there are a couple in our school, and another 3 upstairs in the main office. Other great resources are the computers in the classroom. In my classroom, the teacher has a computer at the front of the room, in addition to about 10 computers in the lab space in the back of the room. The students have the option of using the computer just for research, or using it during a lab experiment.The teacher also has access to a projector of great quality, as well as a sound system. The sound system is basic and includes a microphone the teacher can wear comfortably as a necklace, and speakers. This allows the teacher to be heard clearly by everyone in the room. There is a district wide technology officer, that I did not have the pleasure of meeting, but heard about from my mentor teacher. He is apparently very friendly, and knowledgeable and was able to set up my teacher's computer, and upgrade her mouse since the old one was had a chord that was too short, and even resolve issues in the students' computers.

Overall, I am pretty happy with the resources available to the students. I feel this much technology is a good start for someone like me who is just a starting teacher. I am not sure how much technology I would be able to incorporate at this stage of my career. I acknowledge that there are some issues with technology resources in the school, and I believe that will probably be true of most schools. So I think the trick is so learn how to be resourceful with what you do have, while also working with the system to acquire the other resources that are needed.