What do you feel are the 4 top barriers you face that make the infusion of technology more difficult?
1. Student Resistance - This past school year many students complained of using the Netbooks and carrying them around, especially when they couldn't access the internet at home when our grant ran out.
2. Internet Speed/Accessibility - This past school year there were many issues with the students not being able to access the internet during class lessons that we were using the Netbooks and Apps. They also didn't have the same access as students that I had as a teacher and I didn't know that until we were trying to do something in class and they were blocked.
3. Students "forget" Netbook/Charger - MANY students wouldn't bring their Netbooks or Chargers to school, lost their chargers (some even misplaced the netbook itself), or they were unusable when we needed them waiting for parts or tech support.
4. Security of Apps for minors - I ran into several Apps that we were trying to use in class that would not allow "Private" settings in student mode.
Stacey, these are valid concerns that many teachers acknowledged at the end of the school year. I will be interested to see the solutions you find to overcome these barriers in your Day 2 blog post. We have an extremely robust network, and it is even being improved more over the summer. You should see better performance next school year.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to some of the hiccups being ironed out. I don't think most of the internet issues with the kids was related as much to speed of connectivity as access/permissions that I didn't know they couldn't get until we entered class and they tried to use it or their accounts somehow not letting them in to the network and then class time lost or passed and they couldn't get where they needed to be. Add that to losing the Internet cards and it was hard to get them to shift behaviors/understanding to making sure they (and parents) allowed time at the school either before/after if they didn't get work done IN class for some reason. I'm thankful Gaggle will allow us to connect on a different level with them this year and I'm also glad to know that there are ways to download most of what we need to feed the information to the students in order for them to still function at home!
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