I realized today that the Apple iBooks my students use turned 8 years old in the last month. I’m amazed by this in that we blog and Flickr and make wiki pages and more with them and they just keep going … on the flip side when they just won’t do it anymore I have NOTHING to take their place. I’ll be back to 30 minutes a week in the computer lab and begging the other laptops we have that are under demand by other classes.
I know … at least I have that when others have much less … but it will be hard to step back. Even having old slower computers for each student is powerful.
Learning is messy
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I am a computer/Reading teacher in a Middle School. I am lucky that I teach both classes in a computer lab with 26 student computers and 2 teacher computers (one on my desk, one at the front of the room to teach from). I have an LCD projector and Mimio that makes my whiteboard interactive. I don’t know what I would do if I lost all that technology. Oh, of course I could still tech, but I’d hate it! Last year we replaced a bunch of 8 year old computers that were in classrooms and teacher planning rooms. (We have a minimum of 6 computers in each classroom and we have 4 teacher planning rooms with 4 or 5 desks in each room with computers for teacher use). The 8 year old computers were taking close to 10 mins to boot up. The student computers in my lab are probably 4 years old and this year I’m feeling their pain. I’m getting random and strange issues with them that is impacting teaching/learning. I have already lobbied the IT department for new computers next year (we do replace certain computers just about every year). I’m hopeful that I’ll get new computers. My old computers will go other rooms that machines older than mine, but aren’t up for new machines just yet.
My point is, that I understand your frustration at old technology, but your thankfulness for having what you do have : )
You’re lucky that you have laptops to use! I teach in a really progressive middle school, but the elementary schools I’m in only have 1 lab/building. You can check out my post about this at http://googtweetblog.edublogs.org/2008/01/07/support-is-everything/