Where I Work

The story for today includes our technology at the school. I am the technology teacher for the 6th-9th graders at our school. This wasn't the best idea in the world considering my technological savvy, but oh well.

For the first few weeks of school, the only technology that I had for technology was pen, paper, my school computer, and an overhead. Eventually, there were laptops brought from the other campus, so we could actually use computers in technology class - amazing!

For second quarter, I had 37 students, but only 33 laptops. In addition, since we weren't connected to a network, the students couldn't save their work, so every day, I had to check all of their typing exercises page by page to see if they were doing the exercises.

Last week I get a call from the assistant administrator asking if I would be willing to do a college and career exploration on the internet with my students during the new semester of technology class. I was more than willing, but cited the fact that we only have one internet access point in my room, as a deterrent to such a plan. The assistant administrator didn't know that we still didn't have the internet as a viable option at this campus.

In a frenzy of activity, it is decided that my room needs to be wireless compatible (something that was all ready to go as of the first few weeks of school but never completed) since I will now have the freshman for technology. In the quest to get my room to be wireless capable, all the IP addresses have to change, so for most of the week, internet and printing is down. As a teacher it is kind of difficult to not be able to print all of your lesson plans and handouts for students. But I guess I just expect a little bit too much.

Anyways, the whirlwind of activity is about to subside as the router is up, and many of the laptops are internet ready. I have wireless and printing capabilities, I went into the office in a state of euphoria. Do you know how much time a week I will save not having to walk across the room, plug in my laptop, pray that the connection and printer work. Now my only question is, did they set the laptops up to print? Maybe I am just a dreamer. But I am typing right now at my desk, life is blissful.