21st century classroom - NOT!

/Vent on

I spent four hours in my classroom on the Sunday before Labor Day. My plan was to organize and plan for my sub (taking time off this week for a very special family event), but I spent most of the time wrestling with my only "working" (and I use that term VERY loosely) computer.

My other computer was dead when we came back after summer vacation. Odd because it was working fine when we left. It now has no operating system, so it won't boot. NO OPERATING SYSTEM! And I only know that because I snuck it home so my high-tech husband could diagnose it. I have no clue how that could possibly have happened unless the county techies were actually reimaging computers this summer (unlikely, since I haven't seen any computers that were reimaged) and got stopped in the middle of the process and never went back to reinstall the OS. Our tech assistant wrote me a work order, but we were told that no work orders will be done until November at the earliest because the tech group is so overwhelmed. I realize that by then there will be hundreds of work orders and I don't expect the work to be done on mine until next spring. It wasn't a great computer, but it worked relatively consistently.

So on our first workday, I moved my only other classroom computer over, attached it to my document camera and TV monitor. We never used that computer last year because it is in terrible shape. It shuts down randomly. You can have it up and running (well, walking with a cane) and you can be across the room not even touching it, and it will shut down. Or you can be in the middle of a lesson using the computer and it will shut down. It locks up when you try to multitask. It cannot change from one program to another with any ease. It is s-l-o-w. I cannot just bring up a website and show my students something (we often do this to build schema). There's no point in trying. Nearly every attempt at using this computer results in it locking up and a reboot that takes over 15 minutes to accomplish. It's just a very frustrating experience.

The four hours I spent today were in an attempt to once again try to install my smart slate (read: glorified mouse that the central office techies say is "just as good as a smartboard." Apparently, none of them has ever actually USED a real smartboard. I don't really need it, but the kids do enjoy using it. I've tried several times to install it, but I thought maybe I'd get lucky today. After lots of troubleshooting, I realized that my front 2 USB ports were dead. I have 4 USB ports in the back. Right now those ports are full with the keyboard, the mouse, the smart slate and the bluetooth for the smart slate. I cannot plug my iPad in for my kids to use, nor can I plug in my iPod to play music for them. I cannot store my music on my shared drive because the engineer asked me not to load up my share with too many files. And I can't use a USB drive for storage because there is no room to attach it. CATCH-22!!!

Needless to say, after DOZENS of attempts, reboots, etc., I only was able to connect the smart slate once and when the computer turned itself off shortly after that and my subsequent prolonged reboot, the smart slate was no longer recognized by the bluetooth. Rinse and repeat.

The computer shut itself down 12 times in the 4 hours that I was working today. It also locked up and required a forced reboot 8 times. It won't always even shut down the regular way (clicking restart) and the only way to get it to shut down and restart is to manually turn the computer off by holding down the power button or to yank the power cable. I was trying to go to a few websites to print out some lessons and books, and I was not able to bring any website up for more than a few minutes without the computer either shutting down or locking up.

I left in utter frustration. 

I went back to school on Labor Day. (Who says teachers are lazy)???? And I wired up an old laptop that my husband gave me for my classroom a couple of weeks ago. I can access the internet with it, but I'm not on the school network, meaning: I can't get to the shared drives, I can't print, etc. It is now my main (read:ONLY) classroom computer and I can use my document camera to project things for my students onto my tv monitor. But since I cannot get to the network, I can't save or retrieve files, view anything but a few basic websites (everything else is blocked because of that Catch-22 of not being on the network). And if the tech staff from the central office finds out that I'm using a non-district-authorized computer for my main (read: only) computer, they'll force me to remove it from the room.

I used to wish I had a projector and pull-down screen, but there would be no point whatsoever to have those things in my classroom right now. All I want right now is ONE reliable computer that can get on the network. 

The sad thing is, I'm sure I'm not the only teacher in my school with such difficulties. I just happen to be the loud one and the one with a little bit of computer savvy so I'm able to troubleshoot and describe the problems. And I'm realistic enough to know that there is no solution.

In my grad classes, the professors repeat the mantra "You CAN have a 21st century school without optimal technology." While that may or may not be true (I completely disagree with them), you can't have one with no access to the internet and a computer that shuts down randomly.

And, being alone in the school for so many hours allowed me to hear the mice scurrying through the ceiling and walls. They did not like me disturbing their quiet time. 

Now that I've written this, I accept that nothing can be done. We'll muddle through as we always have.

/Vent off