I'm surprised I rememberd my password after all this time, anyways since I have been living this first hand for some time now I felt compelled to give some experienced input... long time listener first time caller?
Where I work the concept of interactive whiteboards and overflowing technology in every classroom is not a new thing. Granted there are several differences between this building and what Microsoft is trying to accomplish...
- High school students are limited to Juniors/Seniors and college credit classes are offered to both them and adult students. - The curriculum wanders outside a normal high school where courses like automotives, engineering and simulation are taught. - The majority of rooms have classroom computers, and those that have the interactive whiteboards also have your standard whiteboards so you have more than just a 60" screen to write on (the interactive boards are relatively tiny compared to plain old ones) - Throwing instructors into technology is a learning curve for them as well as the students, and some of them still prefer to do things the old fashioned way despite whats available. - I imagine the total student computer inventory here is at least 500 stations or so.
However, they (whomever thier IT staff is) need to be well prepared for the ensuing caveats involved with giving all these fun toys to high school students... and if these are all freshmen I cringe at the thought of what those computers will look like in a few months. The computers here take quite a beating on the operating system side and after trying to do all the standard tricks in keeping them in line we just went to where the most heavily used rooms revert back to a preset image on reboot. I cannot begin to describe what kind of spyware/viruses/adware gets on a computer that is set in front of a set of students who would rather play games than do anything constuctive all day. Granted, most students play nice and for the most part physical vandalism to the machines has been extremely minor. Troubled classrooms also get student control software (sold by the same company as the whiteboards, hmmm who could they be?) so the teacher may at thier discresion lock the workstations or observe if they are goofing off. Really this is all that it boils down to that the instructors maintain control over the students despite the technology at hand... even better when the majority of students are actually enthusiastic about what they are doing.
No idea if the Microsoft school has implemented or has any idea of what I just described, but when you dump alot of technology into your average high school and dont maintain control... all the students will learn is how to get really good at Trackmania and a bunch of flash games. I could continue going on elaborating about "well, you should have done this this and this to keep the students in line" but thanks to alot of educational software requiring administrator rights it becomes a hell of alot easier just giving them the keys to the car, except the car resets back to a new state every morning. Oh yeah, does the Philedelphia school district know that they will have to keep spending money on this school every 2-3 years as the technology is no longer up to date?
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I'm surprised I rememberd my password after all this time, anyways since I have been living this first hand for some time now I felt compelled to give some experienced input... long time listener first time caller?
Where I work the concept of interactive whiteboards and overflowing technology in every classroom is not a new thing. Granted there are several differences between this building and what Microsoft is trying to accomplish...
- High school students are limited to Juniors/Seniors and college credit classes are offered to both them and adult students.
- The curriculum wanders outside a normal high school where courses like automotives, engineering and simulation are taught.
- The majority of rooms have classroom computers, and those that have the interactive whiteboards also have your standard whiteboards so you have more than just a 60" screen to write on (the interactive boards are relatively tiny compared to plain old ones)
- Throwing instructors into technology is a learning curve for them as well as the students, and some of them still prefer to do things the old fashioned way despite whats available.
- I imagine the total student computer inventory here is at least 500 stations or so.
However, they (whomever thier IT staff is) need to be well prepared for the ensuing caveats involved with giving all these fun toys to high school students... and if these are all freshmen I cringe at the thought of what those computers will look like in a few months. The computers here take quite a beating on the operating system side and after trying to do all the standard tricks in keeping them in line we just went to where the most heavily used rooms revert back to a preset image on reboot. I cannot begin to describe what kind of spyware/viruses/adware gets on a computer that is set in front of a set of students who would rather play games than do anything constuctive all day. Granted, most students play nice and for the most part physical vandalism to the machines has been extremely minor. Troubled classrooms also get student control software (sold by the same company as the whiteboards, hmmm who could they be?) so the teacher may at thier discresion lock the workstations or observe if they are goofing off. Really this is all that it boils down to that the instructors maintain control over the students despite the technology at hand... even better when the majority of students are actually enthusiastic about what they are doing.
No idea if the Microsoft school has implemented or has any idea of what I just described, but when you dump alot of technology into your average high school and dont maintain control... all the students will learn is how to get really good at Trackmania and a bunch of flash games. I could continue going on elaborating about "well, you should have done this this and this to keep the students in line" but thanks to alot of educational software requiring administrator rights it becomes a hell of alot easier just giving them the keys to the car, except the car resets back to a new state every morning. Oh yeah, does the Philedelphia school district know that they will have to keep spending money on this school every 2-3 years as the technology is no longer up to date?