Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Cobbling technology
As I have discussed before, I work in a high school with some old technology. As far as I can tell, the school won a technology grant in 1999. Most of our laptops, digital cameras, data projectors, and other various pieces of equipment are from that year. This means I often find myself cobbling together different pieces to make one usable unit. For example, one DVD player stopped working. I used the cables on another DVD player and the remote went to another unit. Then I took the TV it had been hooked up to and traded it out with another TV whose sound had started to go. When teachers need a laptop with a projector, we have a session of twenty questions. I have one laptop that can be hooked up to the Internet. Another that has a USB port and another that can only take floppies. Then there are two more that are newer and are tablets. One is missing the stylus pen and while both of them can hook up to the Internet, both of them have broken ports where a data projector would be hooked into. It becomes very frustrating trying to meet the needs of teachers and students. Also, it can be a bit embarrassing. Sometimes I do not ask all the right questions or the teacher comes in and signs-up for the projector themselves. If they sign-up for a projector that does not meet their needs, then I am called in to fix the un-fixable. It is hard to constantly have to apologize for it and then the teachers are frustrated because they have to change their plans on the fly. On the bright side, I have found that I can be pretty creative on finding my way around these problems. Before you know it, I may be the MacGyver of LHS.
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3 comments:
That's so funny, right before the last line I was thinking of McGyver. It really is a shame how little the education system gets in terms of money allotted for supplies and technology. With technology needs increasing in leaps and bounds you'd think they'd try and keep up with the times. Especially since the students of today will be the workers of tomorrow expected to have experience with this stuff when they enter the workforce. I work at a branch in a low-income neighborhood, and I know that many of our patrons depend on our technology to keep them in the know. Especially in situations where they can't afford computers in their house and the schools don't get the updates they need either.
i own season one of macgyver if you need some fresh ideas. it's great in the pilot episode when he smirks at the camera as he somehow combines common household items to dismantle a nuclear missile. it's like the writers are saying, "yeah, we know this is ridiculous." it seems like you have the opposite problem though. i would venture to guess that even macqyver would be out of his league there. and you say you don't know squat about technology.
Good for you for hanging in there with such challenging conditions. Your school is pretty typical of most in this country, I'm afraid. It is distressing when you think of how skewed priorities are that you are having to deal with nine year old equipment.
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