It is near the end of May 2010, and as I rush to finish up the school year and plan graduation for our seniors, I want to consider where we are with technology as a result of this year...
We started out the year with a single computer lab and a library resource center for use by nearly 450 students...we do have a business lab as well, but the business teacher uses her classroom for six of the seven periods of the day. Since the English department requires students to generate portfolios for each year, with the senior portfolio being a capstone experience, we spent much of the first teacher day of school scheduling our time in the lab. Obviously, this caused a number of problems not only within the department, but also throughout the school...having so little access to the computers required planning and commitment to that planning that did not allow for much spontaneity or creative adjustment to our scheduling. It was painful and also bred a degree of resentment as other disciplines felt they did not have much, if any, access to the computer labs. You can imagine how this impacted student learning and faculty morale...
So, way back in October, we received a grant to put two computer labs (24 desktop machines each) into our Language Arts department--two classrooms--Junior and Seniors. Once installed and troubleshot (is that a word?), we were able to start using them in a variety of ways--I put all of my classes on Moodle, so I was able to eliminate much of the paper in my classroom. Using Moodle and our newly acquired access to the web, I went about integrating as many Web 2.0 tools as I possibly could into my classes. It was a lot of work, but I loved learning about all these tools and trying to see how it all impacted the organization and management of my classroom, but more importantly, how it impacted my students...Were they learning more? Were they learning differently? Was the learning "taking" more easily? Were the students being better prepared for life after high school?
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