When the faculty convened at the beginning of August, the school didn’t have internet just yet. Well, we did have DSL, but it was only in one room. We were pretty busy in professional development and creating curriculum, so it wasn’t a very big deal. Nobody brought in laptops, nor did anyone really request it.
I had a spare wireless router at home. I brought it in, set it up and found that it reached about half the school. I let people know and within a few days we had about seven people bringing in laptops daily. Coincidense? I don’t think so.
We have 30 new desktops sitting in a room waiting to be unpacked. Right now, we haven’t ordered software yet, nor have we got printers. I was thinking about what I would do on a computer like that and the answer is, not much. It would probably just sit there. However, if it had an internet connection my answer would be very different. I’d have access to clip art, online word processors and photos to put up around my room. I could get handwriting fonts that I could use in notepad to create alphabet strips, communicate with other teachers and look up curriculum ideas for both science and social studies (which we are creating just about from scratch). I could blog nad read blogs, collaborate via wikis and put homework assignments online.
I think what it really boils down to is that when you have access to the internet, you can find solutions. The wealth of information available is worth so much more than the circuit boards that the computer is made from. I would gladly take a five year old computer with an internet connection over a top of the line dual processor speed demon that isn’t connected. We’re gotten to the point where that network connection is the single greatest technology investment there is, hands down.
Take off every piece of software on the computer except my browser and I’d still be a happy camper.
It really is the case these days that a computer that is not online is not really that useful. Granted even if it’s only to check the odd email on a video workstation, without the network, something is certainly missing. That “thing” is what you said - access to solutions, because you never know what the problems are going to be in a day or when they are going to happen, but with a connection you know you can get the answer. Just like now when people can’t remember a movie or lyric and wish that they had a computer or blackberry around.
BlogWalk Chicago initial summary
It’s several hours after BlogWalk with sixteen people, and I am feeling overwhelmed from the day of conversation, coffee, pizza, a snowball fight and more conversation.
Mate, you are dead right about the web connection being the most critical part for a classroom teacher now. I had to present our new Activboards to the school council tonight and my flipchart presentation was unavailable because our local network was down and I couldn’t get to my folder where I’d stored it. What to do - go online, go to the Promethean resource website and download some samples (enough to show the parents) and some other online bits and pieces to get me through. It worked - without the web, they would have been less than impressed with the school’s new investments but when they could see the internet content coming through on a big screen and how I could interact with it, they were sold. Heads nodding, great job, Graham, no curly questions. Great observation, Steve.
I agree completely. I will say, however, that working on a 5 year old computer creates its own set of problems. I, too, am in a new position this year and came into an office sporting only a 5 year old laptop with 128 MB of RAM. It hasn’t been pretty. I find myself wondering how much more I might have already accomplished in the time I’ve spent rebooting so far this year.
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What’s an online word processor? Too bad you’re not connected. I find that hard to imagine…
Looking forward to when you restart your podcasting, but you’ve clearly got your priorities right!
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