Tech in My Placement
Overall, my findings for the Tech in My Placement assignment depressed me. Pioneer is one of the top high schools in Ann Arbor, however the technology available to students and teachers is outdated and frequently broken. My mentor teacher taught at Pioneer for most of her career and then moved to Skyline for a few years. At Skyline, teachers are spoiled by the technology they have available to them as well as the support from the technology staff. When she returned to Pioneer, the stark difference between the technology resources available at Pioneer vs. Skyline have been a source of many complaints.
The laptop carts available at Pioneer are older, very slow, and often broken. If a teacher wants to use technology for a day in class, they must allot a large amount of time solely to letting the computers start up and have students switch out their non-functioning computers with functioning ones. My mentor teacher has had issues with her projecting system making all sorts of weird/loud sounds and the technology staff has just said, that's how it is, there is no way to fix it. In a Spanish classroom, functioning sound is vital to hear authentic speech and music.
It took months for my teacher to get the Doc Cam that she requested at the beginning of the year. Eventually, she did receive the Doc Cam but it frequently malfunctions. Compared to the Doc Cams that are in classrooms here at UofM, the Doc Cam in my classroom is just not a great piece of technology.
There are many great online Spanish practice resources that I would love to be able to use in the classroom. However, without reliable laptops this becomes very difficult. Students can access some of these items on their phones, but not all of them. Not all students have a smartphone to begin with. This limits the activities that one can use that involve technology and requires that students use these helpful practice resources at home. If they don't have computers at home, then access to these resources is limited to time they go to the library to use the computers there.
Overall, it seems many people are in the same boat as me at their schools. Their technological resources are lacking. Some questions that this has raised for me are: How do schools raise money to improve technological resources? Do other teacher's see the technology at Pioneer as normal, or sub-par? What sort of budget does a school have for technology and where does this money go?
Hi Betsy! I can definitely vouch for the "spoiled Skyline" perception. We have a lot of technology and a pretty active support network in our media center to help teachers. It's been great using some of these things, though I do have some reservations. First of all, I should point out that some of the more advanced or unusual technologies are not even used. I suspect this is because teachers simple don't have a regular use for them. In all honesty, the technology my teacher uses most (other than projector) is the laptop cart. We have several of these in the school, and a pretty convenient online scheduling system for them. That said, we have only used the carts a handful of times this year. So, as someone placed in a school with many resources available, I can only tell you that it's not always all it's made out to be. Of course, I'd rather have it and not use it than need it and not have it...
ReplyDeleteBetsy - I think you raise a good point about the disconnect between what resources are available in a general sense, and what's available to specific schools. It sounds like your school's issue is not just that you don't have fancy new toys, but that what you have isn't reliable, so you always have to have a plan B or C. What's surprising to me is that there's such a "stark difference" as you say between schools *in the same district*. I remember when Skyline was being built, there was a real feeling that all the money would go to Skyline and we'd be using the same computers at Pioneer for a decade. At the time, I thought it was just pessimism, but it looks like it hasn't been that far off! It really makes you think about how the school experience is so much more than what classes you take and with which teachers.
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