Sunday, February 14, 2010

In the Hew and Brush article, I wanted to address an issue that I noticed involving the lack of technical support catalogued under resource-type barriers. We all know that the student to computer ratio has dropped considerably, but what happens when the computers that we have available are not working properly? I think this is what Hew and Brush are trying to emphasize in the paragraph found on page 227 of the article. During my internship, my cooperating teacher and I frequently had problems implementing technology into the classroom because the two computers—her desktop and her laptop—frequently malfunctioned. For the majority of the semester we could not use any content on the internet with the students because we only had internet connection on the desktop computer. We complained to whoever would listen for the first two months before finally reconciling that the problem was not to be fixed. The desktop printer was hardly reliable either, and as it was much more necessary to getting worksheets printed, we went in search of technologically savvy teachers that would not mind helping. In the last month of the semester, we were finally able to get a reliable internet connection on the laptop. The issue was this—the school has a technical support person, but she was quite overwhelmed with her work load. Our issues went on a waiting list, and though they were eventually acknowledged and rectified, we had to find other means to teach a lesson that could have been more intriguing and engaging with the use of our available and properly-functioning technology.

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