Topic 18. When Technology Goes Wrong

The last week at school has been completely frustrating.  My computer became a little bit more human than anyone cares to believe.  I'm not kidding.  It refused to access any site hosted by my school district.  It was in rebellion.  I could google, use private e-mail, check my bank account, or access anything NOT hosted by our school district.  No one could fix it until 8th period on Tuesday afternoon (15 minutes before the break). 

Now this story is hilarious in retrospect but it made for a super stressful week.  No one believed the problem. I had to log on to another computer to do all my attendance, grades, and posting to moodle which was inconvenient and I usually forgot.  Then they kept interrupting my class to try to fix the darn thing.  Most annoying was that they reimaged my computer without telling me.  I lost an entire program and hours worth of work. 

Technology is an amazing and wonderful thing.  However, when it goes wrong it causes the teacher tons of stress, wastes hours of work, and creates more work.  I share a room with another teacher who is not familiar with a lot of the technology in my room.  When something doesn't work properly he lets a kid try to fix it.  Many students are good with their own computer, but a networked computer is completely different.  They are constantly messing with the settings on the Promethean and randomly pushing buttons.  My 4th period class is always behind my other classes because I spend 20 minutes at least once a week trying to fix some sort of technology glitch. 

Another frustration is reliability.  At the beginning of the school year, we were all encouraged to use Moodle for assignments.  The first night I wanted my students to access Moodle for their homework, the server crashed.  The students were completely unprepared the next day.  This went on for 2 more days.  Luckily after the second crash I developed plan B. 

Finally, using technology in the classroom is difficult because we are in transition as a society.  While most of my students have wireless access at home, a computer, and the ability to use all sorts of programs, I have a few that are resistant.  I can't assume everybody will be able to use the technology so I have to teach technology as well as history OR create another lesson plan.  We have all sorts of technology that is supposed to help communicate with students and parents more effectively.  However, we can't rely on it because some parents don't check their e-mail or use the online gradebook.  Therefore, teachers have to use all the new technology and then the old fashioned approach as well.