Technology is powerful!

Technology is powerful. Powerful enough to make you a happy teacher or a frustrated teacher! 🙂

I’m going to do a short venting session (you’ve had one of these before haven’t you??), then I’m going to turn it into something positive!

First of all let’s just say that I am a teensy weensy frustrated (but getting over it). My teacher computer CRASHED last week and I spent all last week printing from down the hall in my best friend’s classroom. I had NO computer to print from within my 4 walls. I have 2 student computers (only 1 will hook up to the internet through a cable that stretches across the room-can’t find one long enough to run through the ceiling-well, I could buy one, probably going to have to do that!). I do have 2 wireless adapters (Dell), but something’s wrong with the drivers or something and they won’t work. Worked last year, not sure why they don’t work now, maybe they are still on summer vacation! 🙂 The new “teacher” laptop that we all have in our rooms this year is not compatible with our school printer. OK-I’m not even going to say anything else about that one!

Anyway, it’s going to be sort of hard to teach the Alabama Technology Course of Study Standards WITHOUT computers! 🙂

Wait-I’m not finished! I am planning on giving my 6th graders a reading baseline assessment tomorrow online. Yes, I could give them the paper version of the assessment, but the online version will grade them for me (Sigh), AND it will give me a breakdown of what they need to work on: main idea, cause and effect, generalizations, etc. WOW! That would be wonderful to help guide my instruction in small groups or with individuals.

So, I wanted to check out the laptop cart that has 25 laptops on it.

1. Only about 20 work. OK, the students can’t really share a computer to take a test on. 🙂

2. Of the 20 that work about 4 are missing keys. Huh? Yes, they’ll still be able to press the key as long as they know what letter USED to be there. 🙂

3. AND, the biggie. A wheel is broken on the cart so we can’t roll it from the high school building down to the elementary building. My students will have to CARRY the laptops from one building to another. OMG! Please pray that we do NOT drop them! 🙂

Now-I’m finished venting! OOPS-I said it was going to be a short vent, my bad! 🙂

After I got home I decided I was going to try to turn lemons into lemonade. I was perusing the internet and found this blog post:

http://gofourthwithowens.blogspot.com/2011/08/pd-progressbook.html

Mrs. Owens-a 4th grade teacher- has so generously posted a “Tech Binder” cover, and I thought it was cute so I saved it to google docs, printed it, and have now made my own TECH BINDER! See the gorgeous picture of my new binder here:

 Don’t you love it? The 1st thing I am going to put in my new TECH binder is the Alabama Technology COS standards. The 2nd thing I am going to put in it is a copy of the letter that I will send to the AL Education Superintendent requesting the proper funds to TEACH the Technology standards that he says we have to teach! Just joking-not really gonna send that letter. But thinking about sending one sure did make me feel better! 🙂

I may not have the equipment to teach the technology standards, but by golly I can organize the standards and activities for that day in the future when I WILL have the equipment to teach it! 🙂

Gotta go-going to surf the web for some great tech ideas that I WISH I could teach! :):):)