Understanding that students like Josh need technology to learn effectively, begs the question do schools provide appropriate technology for students learning styles and interest? The answer will vary by district, building, and even classroom. In Pewamo-Westphalia School district the answer is mixed. The 7-12 jr/sr. building houses approximately 420 students and 120 computers and 24 teachers. Almost all classrooms have one computer for just the teacher. The majority of computers are contained in three labs. The latest and best-equipped computers are in the computer science teacher’s lab, me. It's used all 7 hours of the day by me and the drafting teacher. Another lab is joined to the business/accounting teacher’s room and is used most hours of the day operating accounting software. Lastly the library has one lab that is checked out by teachers on an hourly basis. It holds 30 computers and also is equipped with an interactive whiteboard. There is also another 14 computers in the library but is difficult for teachers to use these due to class size. Thus 20+ teachers wrestle over the one lab that can fit their entire classroom.
In addition to computers the school is also equipped with a few older digital cameras and camcorders that are rarely used. The two most recent camcorders and digital cameras are in my room and are used infrequently by others. Fortunately, in the last tech plan meeting it was decided to provide all teachers with a data projector if they wanted one. All but two classrooms now have data projectors permanently mounted. This was a huge leap forward for our school.
Is this comparable to your building?
Do you see the same issues?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Good morning Brian, Hello Josh ;)
ReplyDeleteI am Brad Foltz, Media Center Specialist from Portland High School and as you already know we are a bigger brother to PW.
We compare similarly on the computer student ratio 120\420 to our 160\613. We break down a little differently. we have three 30 seat labs where two are used for teaching, one for Computer Applications 5 hours and a CAD lab for 1 hour, the other lab is a drop in that is checked out by teachers using a common folder on the Outlook server and is used nearly everyday all hours.
Additionally we have ten teachers who share ten seat labs in suit like arrangements. These are predominantly Language Arts teacher with a couple being History/Social studies teachers.
As for data projectors we are woefully behind your district. Our three labs have permanently mounted projectors and our science department has funded projectors for their four teachers leaving 28 of our 33 teachers without a projector.
I have one digital video camera, one really old camcorder, two Macs, one PC, and a video switcher that I try to run a weekly broadcast with a rag tag club. We refer to it as our ghetto studio. But the kids do quality work for the most part.
The biggest problem I notice is that once you start embracing technology district wide keeping current is an issue.
bf
I know were you are coming from up untill this year. We have between 550 to 600 6th thru 8th grade students with 2 30 seat labs in the media center that is shared by all teachers. Then we have a computer lab but that is used all day by the computer applications teacher. Now every student has a HP Mini so this will no long be an issue.
ReplyDelete