iSean

43folders has an interesting post today by a math teacher who is desperately trying to integrate technology into her teaching yet she is encountering barrier after barrier. for example:

I have found it increasingly annoying to hear from on high that we need to integrate more technology in our classroom, yet most new teachers and old teachers are still using old standbys because we don’t have the time to use and troubleshoot our way through technology. Making worksheets by copying and pasting by hand. Building test questions from book programs that only work on PCs or OS 9 on macs. Wanting to use videos from the internet only to find they are blocked. Wanting to post information to a website or build my own website to find that FTP is blocked or that online-services are clunky, restrictive, and cumbersome. Granted that I am lucky enough to have a computer, a projector, and an ELMO (video camera hookup to a projector.) But for the love of turtles! It seems that the industry ignores us!

this certainly reflects what i’ve experienced from teachers who take my graduate courses. i know going into these courses that the teachers who are enrolled are already the teachers who are using and trying to use technology in their teaching. the teachers in our master’s program are in it to learn how to overcome some of these barriers. the bottom line is that it’s not easy to do and one of the main reasons we use technology is to improve upon what we do without using technology. if technology adds complications and, more importantly, time to a task then it’s very hard to justify. the teachers i work with can justify it because they want to succeed and be a role model. sometimes the legwork in the beginning can save much time over the long haul and that’s okay as well. but when districts hamper the progress technology-using teachers are trying to achieve then that’s problematic. and districts do hamper progress as this teacher writes:

A lot of my issues stem from the limitations (or invisible limitations) of my districts computer policies. I can’t control my district IT, I can whine at them, write them letters, request things and so forth but if that is going to take time away from me making sure next day’s lesson is done and useful-forget it!

i realize schools have to deal with viruses (at least if they are using PCs), security, and safety and all of that jazz, but far too often the model for technology is one that starts from the perspective that blocking and locking content, access, and features out is best until someone can justify why something is useful or necessary. teachers just don’t have the time to have these battles. i use my own website for many of my online classes. often, teachers have to work with their district to allow my website content to be viewable on school computers. this isn’t because i have anything that is questionable; rather, this is because of the mindset that it’s all bad until proven otherwise.

but back to the math teacher who wrote the article . . . she is finding ways to integrate technology into her teaching and she is having to do much of the work at home. why is that? it’s because most schools don’t value technology and even when they do they don’t have a comprehensive plan with regard to technology. technology isn’t tested on NCLB tests and that makes it hard to go above and beyond what districts are already spending on technology in their annual budgets. it’s a shame, really. the math teacher points out that many solutions are offered in the comments section of the article she wrote and that some suggestions are really worthwhile. but the fact remains that the onus for integrating technology and overcoming the district barriers is on the teacher. that’s a recipe for ensuring that only a select few teachers will use technology beyond a token lesson here or there.

Technorati Tags: ed tech, technology integration, barriers, students, teachers, technology in education

i was just checking out arstechnica and came across an article discussing a new report out about the “Google generation.” the report looks at kids born in 1993, so they’d be about 14 - 15 now. these are kids who have grown up only knowing a word on the Internet and Google searches, etc. this report can be downloaded as a PDF here and is sponsored by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee. and while the report finds these kids are more competent at using technology, they still have poor information literacy skills just like the generation before them. one of the neat findings is that kids today are no more impatient and no more in need of instant gratification than previous students. if nothing else, it’s nice to have a little snapshot about current teens and technology.

holy gee whiz, you wouldn’t believe the hosting/server issues i’ve had over the past week+. i am using 4 different hosting services for various domain names i manage. 2 of the 4 hosting services have really failed me this week. first, the domain i have for my courses went down the day before classes started. this included all of my phpBB forum installations. doh. these were on a site using iPowerweb (no link as I don’t want to promote them). to make matters worse, here we are almost a week later and they still haven’t resolved the issue. i talked with various people and tried online chats, email, etc. to no avail. they are working on it. apparently, they moved me to a new server and missed about 60% of my content so everything was broken. i tried to copy stuff over for them, but the mySQL database stuff was all broken. i quickly registered the .net version of my .com site for my classes and set up everything with a new host. really crummy that i had to do this at the last second — the setup time alone took me probably 10 hours that i had already spent on the old and broken site.

but that wasn’t my only issue. this site has been down for nearly a week as well. this site is hosted with bluehost (again, no link). they’ve been pretty good until now, but this outage is far too long. this site hosts my blog, but also some class stuff (e.g., drupal installations for class content). i don’t really have this stuff backed up and i have another week’s worth of material due to my students on Monday. I have been doing it from scratch and i hope to have it ready by Monday but i’ll be working late tonight, tomorrow and Sunday night unless Bluehost can get my site working again (and, if this is posted on Friday night then they got it working and i was able to post this draft — EDIT 2:15 Saturday and it’s working). okay, they have things mostly working again, but my blog has a mySQL table missing and that’s causing an error. apparently, they upgraded PHP and Apache recently and my site has been down since then. so both issues with hosting companies is because of an upgrade. i never upgrade any tools i use during a semester, but i couldn’t stop the hosting companies from upgrading their equipment, etc. crummy that this all hit at once.

the worst thing about iPowerweb is the length of time it takes to get someone on the phone. i had old phones, but i was on the phone for over 1/2 hour without getting a person and my phone died. i ended up ordering new phone set on Amazon with overnight delivery and now i have 17 hours of talk time. watch out tech support, you’re now going to hear from me . . . and i can sit on hold for a long time. doh. i should point out that Bluehost had me talking with tech support in about 5 minutes of holding. that’s world’s and world’s better than iPowerweb. i think i’ll drop iPowerweb ASAP. i just have to figure out how to move a phpBB database from one phpBB installation on one host to another phpBB installation on a different host. if i can do that then iPowerweb will soon be dead to me.

Technorati Tags: blogs, hosting, mySQL

i just came across an article titled, “The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2007” and i looked the list over and checked out some of the apps. i like to think i am fairly on top of technologies that can be beneficial in the classroom yet i hadn’t heard of any of these tools. and that has me thinking . . . is it worth it for a teacher/educator to invest time using one of these tools in teaching and learning? i have no doubt that some of these tools can be beneficial for a teacher and a learner; however, that’s not my concern. i would be worried that i’d put a lot of time into a tool OR that my students would start a project and the tool would evaporate — go away. it’s one thing to use Google tools or some other more mainstream developer’s tools because they have a lot of funding behind them and there is little chance that the tool would be gone in an instant. but many of these other tools may not last. is it worth the risk to invest time and energies into them???