Well its Friday night and just got home from the football game which we lost. Still struggling with the paper as for how to put it all together. I have a lot of pieces but just can not make it flow smoothly together. The hardest thing that I am struggling with is the survey there is just so much data that its hard to pick apart. So it looks like tonight will be a long night trying to figure this thing out. But I know in the end it will all fall together just like the presentation did last week.

When Technology Fails

Now that we have all this great technology to use. What do you do when a student works for hours on something and when he goes to print it or send it to you they can not find it anywhere on their network drive? I have had this happen to students many of times luckily for some of them I now how much time and effort that they put into it. I did not make them go back and re due it do to the fact we did not have time we needed to move on to the next thing. I tell them that they can re due it if they want but it will not be necessary I just made that assignment exempt from the grade book. And I know what you are going to say the student should have saved it in more than one spot well up until this year are students could not save to a flash drive they could only save in the network drive they have. I witnessed a teacher get very made at a student today because the assignment was not on his network drive. And I personal know that this student had it finished because the other day in my class they were finished with my work for the day and then they finished this particular assignment. I guess the point that Iam getting at is that technology is great but it just like humans it is not perfect all the time. We as educators that use technology need to be very flexible when situations like this come up.

Wireless Network @%$&*

To day I went to do my Technology Lesson and it did not go so hot. Well you see are building is all wireless accept for the teachers computers, office, administration and a few others scattered around the building. We have no real computer lab because all the students will be receiving their mini by the end of this week. But the art teacher and I have 30 laptops that we share because of the programs that we use in are classrooms, so we kind of do have a mobile computer lab but we are the only two that can use the laptops.

My second hour class comes in and sits down I tell them what they will be doing and they all seem very excited about it. I have them get a laptop out and they start logging in it should only take no more than a few minutes to log in you would think. No it took some of them 20 minutes to log in and others never did log in. For those that were able to log in they could not find their folder to store their poster when they finished, plus I have a folder that I put a bunch of clip art in and that was not even showing up on some of them. Talk about very frustrating, in the end I did end up getting one students poster its not done but it will have to do until they can get are wireless working properly.

I heard are computer applications teacher talking with are technology coordinator after school and she was say that don't plan on it working properly for the rest of the week. I never would have had this problem if they would have given the art teacher and I the computer lab that we wanted when they built the building.

videos

At our last staff meeting and the other nigh when we had our building dedication ceremony my principal showed these video clips. The first one if from our staff meeting and the seconded one is from the building dedication. I found both of them very interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M_336pDWoM
http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=223&title=Shake_it_Up

Me and Technology

I love technology but I also hate technology the reason for hating technology is that I am a terrible writer and speller so this takes me out of my comfort zone writing in blogs, texting, and e-mail . I would much rather talk face to face or even chatting over the phone interaction. And I feel that we as a society need this type of interaction to keep us more intellectual in our day to day life's. Maybe I am totally wrong but that's just how I feel. That's properly the biggest reason why I hate technology but don't get me wrong I love it dearly thank goodness for spellcheck and all those great features. And in the area that I teach technology has made things so much easier for students with programs like CAD, 3D Modeling, CNC Machining and so on. I have a program that students can build a bridge and it will test how strong it is in a matter of seconds and tell them what they need to change to make their bridge stronger. If students were to do this by building a bridge then testing it that would take days and countless hours of work. So technology does make things easier in life but we can not let it take over are life's.

Book

Well I have finished reading the book, that in its self is quite amazing for me. I will admit that there was a lot of great info in the book, the only problem is when do I find time to use it, let alone figure out how to use it. My question why doesn't administration take the time to have someone who nows how to use this technology sit down with all content area's and show them what they can do with it to make their content area stronger? Instead they have us all go to meeting on technology all at the same time and overwhelm us with all the great things we can do with technology. I know a lot of teacher who love all the technology it just they don't know how to use it because they give us so much at one time with out a lot of training. I will admit I do like to learn on my own but I also would like some one who nows my content are to show me things I could be doing with this technology.

September 21 2009

Monday September 21 2009

Technology what a wonderful thing that is if it works properly. Today I went to show my students some safety videos off of YOU Tube. Well guess what I had no sound in my room luckily for me their was an empty room I could use to show the videos to the students. But if that room would not have been available I really do not know what I would have done because I made no other plans in case this happen. Some time I think all this technology makes my job harder rather than easier, because you almost have to plan for things like this so it makes for two times the work. So is technology a good thing or bad thing? I personal think that it is a good thing. What do you think?