EdTech Avenue

For a little while, anyway…

Now that I’m really on the home stretch, work is slightly more stressful than it was before Christmas break. I’m working very hard getting things done that I want settled before I start my leave in what I hope will be a few weeks yet. This week I started updating our mobile lab, which is quite a task when there really is nowhere to set them all up at one time attached to power. I have a few set up in my office and a few out on the top of the cart which is sitting in the hallway for lack of any other place for it! These laptops are pretty slow; they are Pentium III 650 machines with 256 MB RAM running Windows XP. I’ve been working with half of them on a wired 100MB network and the other half on their wireless 54MB cards. Windows updates haven’t been run for quite some time, so there are many!

We’ve also begun our 2nd Learnia test for the year. Since we are only giving one ClassLinks test, I wanted to make sure there was a similar ratio of standards covered as are on the ClassViews tests. That was no small feat for math since of the six from which to choose, none include all the standards. Reading was a bit easier; I was able to find at least one ClassLinks with similar standards to the ClassViews. I ended up building my own tests for math to include as close to the same standards as I could find. I had some trouble with matching up the standards with the actual items available to add to the tests, but I worked around it. We’ll see how it works out!

And then there’s the E-Rate process… We did not receive as many bids as I expected from our Form 470 posting. But now I think that is probably a good thing. With our budget the way it is for next year, I think we’ll hold off on the bigger projects and just apply for discounts on services we already have in place.

With Creative Commons licensing, many more photos and images are available to download for educational purposes than ever before. But Pics4Learning (offered by Tech4Learning) screens photos and makes sure they are appropriate for educational venues of all sorts. You can even contribute some of your own images! This is a terrific site for teachers to use when they want a one-stop site for finding images for student projects. They have categories and a search function to find just the photo you want. I would imagine as this site becomes more well-known, we can expect the library to grow and grow.

Do you know of any other good sites for images or audio for education?

I have been working on a near-zero budget for a couple of years now.  Before that, we were blessed with grant money from Best Buy Corporate that allowed us to improve our one working computer lab and install two more - one mobile.  I used that money as frugally as I could, purchasing refurbished computers from an organization called Minnesota Computers for Schools.  They were “good enough,” but I told our administrators that, while these machines will get us up and running on limited funds, they will need to be replaced sooner than if we would buy new.  I also stated that what is really essential is that we get technology upgrades into our school operating budget so we can replace equipment on a reasonable cycle.  We are now two years A.B.B. (After Best Buy), and we are in desperate need of updates to not just one area but three.  While purchasing refurbished machines works, it is almost twice the work each year to install and support, and the end financial cost is actually higher.
I am not working with techno-phobic administrators.  They realize the importance of technology in the lives of our students, but there is simply no money.  This year I submitted a technology plan to the state in hopes of eligibility for E-Rate funds, but what I’m hearing in the blogosphere is that these types of funding programs are fading.

The biggest challenge for Spellings is that her rhetoric doesn’t coincide with her actions. She says that underfunding of technology in schools is a big problem, but the Department’s failure to fund the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program gives her statements no credibility. The federal Technology Innovation Challenge Grant program, the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund, the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) program, the Community Technology Centers, and the Regional Technology in Education Consortia – they are all gone. The only thing left is EETT, and now the feds have proposed zeroing out that budget yet again.

To say that this scares me as far as my job is concerned is certainly an understatement.  For those of us in the private sector, I can only think the funding is even less accessible.  I hope we can get some federal help and that my hours and hours of composing a four-year technology play are not in vain.

I hope I can convince my administrators of the urgency with which we must now seek out funds to budget for technology for school operations.  I will continue the crusade!