Parkour: Tech Style

Money is always an obstacle to tech availabilty, as I’ve noted before. Budgets are ridiculously tight, and the educational spending triage that has to happen is inequitable. In my school, we have a lot more technology than many schools do, which I suppose is a blessing. I mean, it’s there, and I can use it, and I don’t have to sign out a computer cart, or have my name on a waiting list and all that. Our kids have the chance to be fully wired up all day, if we wanted them to be. However, it seems the more we have, the more we seem to need…sometimes it feels like the influx of tech is creating a money pit of the sort that we’ll never be able to catch up, or be able to reasonably allocate funding to anything else. Books still matter, as does paper, and pencils, and many of the other “low tech” but hands on options, like crayons and paint. What does one do with the outmoded forms of tech that get heaped up? It’s not like there’s a trade-in program, like there is with automobiles. The planned obsolescence of technology is frankly frightening, and I am beginning to see the real disparity of funding that is a huge part of “keeping up” with educational technology.

I don’t feel like there’s a huge resistance factor on the part of the teachers, though; in many places, that is a huge obstacle to change. Not all of my colleagues are equally versed in all things tech, but we all try, and we go to trainings, and seek out assistance. Sometimes we wander around in the tech wilderness together, but we manage to get through it, and we generally embrace technology as it applies to our needs and the students’ interests. Can we do more? Probably; but then, sometimes it’s not really needed, and I find, myself, that it is often quicker, for example, to just grab a dictionary off the shelf rather than go through the shenanigans required of accessing the online dictionary.

On a practical level, sometimes tech fails us; the connectivity challenges, the less than full wi-fi coverage, and the inequitable allotting of resources can be a hurdle that takes up a lot of time to work around. I have a SMART board, but the computer tethered to it is an old desktop model, balanced on a media cart, and it sounds like its grinding coffee half the time. But, we make do. It’s not perfect, but it works. Like with all other aspects of teaching in a rural area, we must be resourceful ad have many back-up plans. When the Internet is down, we should be able to accomplish the lesson in other ways. When students lose the use of their laptops due to misuse/breaking their contract, the planned activity should be able to be accomplished in other ways.

In sum, technology is a great tool, one of many that we need to be able to employ, and sometimes, if a tool fails, we should be creative enough to be able to revise and move forward seamlessly.