I am going to take this week's open ended blog opportunity to vent. So, brace yourselves....
Last week SMS held its May faculty meeting and the number one item on the agenda: TECHNOLOGY!! Yay! Er, yay? We were told that we are finally going to get wifi in our building by the start of next year. That is a definite. BUT! We were also told that we will not be given the password to the network, so that we will not be able to bring in our devices from home. Unless we are using a district issued device, and we do not have nearly enough to go around, we will still not have access to the wifi. Seriously!? Then why give it to us. It's like we're little kids and the superiors are saying "nuh uh uhhh...don't touch".
We were also told that within the next couple years, the students will go one on one to iPads. This gave me chills, in a bad way, because our district just cut over $800,000 from our budget. Hence, bye bye to a few great non-tenured teachers. Are iPads better than great teachers? You tell me. Nonetheless, we have yet to get any PD on using iPads in the classroom. My principal simply said, you will each get an iPad to take home from the summer and I expect that you will all learn how to use it in the classroom. I'm sorry but that is not effective. There are teachers in my building who will not even know how to turn on their iPads. It's infuriating that the district is still not understanding the need for PD, in regards to teaching with technology.
Is it April vacation yet....? >:(
For those of you who have Blackboard, please click the link below:
http://bb.usj.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_7854_1%26url%3D
Last week SMS held its May faculty meeting and the number one item on the agenda: TECHNOLOGY!! Yay! Er, yay? We were told that we are finally going to get wifi in our building by the start of next year. That is a definite. BUT! We were also told that we will not be given the password to the network, so that we will not be able to bring in our devices from home. Unless we are using a district issued device, and we do not have nearly enough to go around, we will still not have access to the wifi. Seriously!? Then why give it to us. It's like we're little kids and the superiors are saying "nuh uh uhhh...don't touch".
We were also told that within the next couple years, the students will go one on one to iPads. This gave me chills, in a bad way, because our district just cut over $800,000 from our budget. Hence, bye bye to a few great non-tenured teachers. Are iPads better than great teachers? You tell me. Nonetheless, we have yet to get any PD on using iPads in the classroom. My principal simply said, you will each get an iPad to take home from the summer and I expect that you will all learn how to use it in the classroom. I'm sorry but that is not effective. There are teachers in my building who will not even know how to turn on their iPads. It's infuriating that the district is still not understanding the need for PD, in regards to teaching with technology.
Is it April vacation yet....? >:(
For those of you who have Blackboard, please click the link below:
http://bb.usj.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_7854_1%26url%3D