It never fails, integrating technology is not foolproof. It is inevitable at some point technology will frustrate us and we find ourselves scrambling at the last minute to reinvent our great lessons in the most engaging way possible, while the non-techie users sit back and mock us for relying on technology. Half of the above scenarios I have personally experienced and the other half I have seen happen during conferences.
The first scenario, creating lessons at home, I am guilty of. I come in the next morning to find the district filter has blocked a particular video or article I wanted to use for engagement in class. I scramble to find a replacement before the first bell rings all the while using some choice vocabulary describing my feelings surrounding district filters. These walled gardens meant to protect our students reduce our ability to integrate technology into our classrooms.
Districts are torn do we give them access or not. By not giving us access they are limiting what could be used effectively for teaching. Anne Murphy Paul in her blog on Why Schools Should Block (Some of) the Internet (2014) said, "if we want our young people to learn anything during the school day, they must be kept away from these sites." She also states, "What is predictable is that young people, given the chance, will use the Web for social and entertainment purposes; what’s practical is to remove that temptation during the school day." All that aside, when the filters are in place students waste their time figuring out how to hack the system. Ms. Paul even admits, "Within days, even hours...their young users have figured out how to circumvent the filters meant to block access to games, social networking, and other noneducational activities (not to mention offensive or inappropriate content).
In an argument to Anne Murphy Paul, Scott McLeod wrote a blog post Filtering social media in schools because it is a 'distraction'. He writes that students know how to use technology for social uses and games, but they do not understand how to use it in productive ways. It is our job as educators to help them learn how to be productive using technology and we cannot do that if the real world is blocked. I tend to agree with him. The solution here would be for districts to open the filters and give students and teachers a chance to prove they can use technology productively.
The second scenario, the blogging platform being down, has also happened to me. When I realized this before first period, I immediately pulled out my iPhone and jumped on Twitter to find out what was going on. I had a response within minutes explaining about the updates. I was at least thankful it wasn't my district blocking yet another useful tool. To avoid this in the future, the companies should give their users a heads up. Most of the time when we set up accounts we are logging in with an email address. It seems to me companies could send out a mass email letting us know in advance so we can plan accordingly.
The next two scenarios are very similar to each other, both have to do with the hardware we use when integrating technology in the classroom. I can't stress enough, always check the hardware in another classroom before relying on it. There is nothing worse than having 30 students in the room sitting idle for 5-10 minutes while you trouble shoot connections or have to download appropriate plug ins or programs. Most teachers aren't able to download the programs themselves they have to wait for their IT guy to come out and do it because downloads are password protected. I was in a Leadership Meeting yesterday for my campus and the presenter was frustrated because the old desktop that worked with the overhead didn't have the right plug ins for her Popplet presentation and her laptop wouldn't connect with the overhead. I felt bad for her and even though I have admin rights to download programs, this was one of our older XP's that would not have supported it anyway. When I demonstrate how to integrate technology in another teachers classroom I always check ahead of time what I am working with. My campus is not uniform, we do not all have the same equipment.
The last scenario, doesn't really have to do with integrating technology in the classroom, but I felt it was important to share if there are any future presenters out there. The wifi being bogged down, hasn't yet affected me, but I have seen it happen too many times at large conferences. For instance, the year before last at the annual, Palm Springs CUE Conference, they had over 3,000 attendees and the wifi was awful. This past year, this same conference had over 5,000 attendees and the wifi was even worse. All over Twitter people were hackling about how can you have a tech conference without wifi. Mike Lawrence, the President of CUE, admittedly joked in his closing about how next year it will be an even better conference and we'll include wifi. Even at ISTE this year, the wifi was maxed out, I wonder how many tweets were posted regarding wifi issues? The solution here is to always have a back up of your presentation that does not require wifi, and for CUE to go with a different provider in the future. At large conferences like these, I find I get very accustomed to taking notes and pictures on my phone, it works great.
