Borderland

I’m not a technology specialist. The technology that I know best is books and pencils. I’m a regular classroom teacher – an elementary school generalist. I got interested in digital media authoring after finishing a MEd in Language and Literacy. Last year I set up some classroom blogs using b2evolution on a school district development server. They were a complete hit with my students, but the server was “repurposed” over the summer and that account no longer exists.

Cut to the present:

District Level
Our school district used to encourage interested teachers to maintain their school web pages, and offered training in Dreamweaver and Fireworks. That model for web development is being revised in an interesting new direction. Instead of having lots of individual static (and frequently outdated) websites that are indexed from the school district’s main page, we are being invited to have our school pages redesigned as database-driven sites, written in PHP. At first I thought this was an attempt to standardize our web presence, like everything else educational nowadays. However, as it turns out this new model is more about separating content from design and enabling more teachers to post content directly on the school sites. Teachers who want to maintain static pages are still welcome to do so. The reservations the teachers at my building had was that we would somehow lose the flavor of our school identity in our website. We’ve been reassured, though, that nothing would change until we were happy with it, and we are intrigued by the prospect of more universal access for teachers to contribute to the district’s web space. So we are in the redesign process right now. This is fun.

Building Level:
It looks as if our new building – with no computer lab – is going to be equipped with wireless laptop carts that will be shared among several classrooms. I’m curious to know at what point we spread ourselves too thin with sharing between classes. What’s a good ratio of students and computers? Are there any statistics on this? Right now each room has about a half-dozen computers. I’m happy that we’re getting more machines, and I hope we figure out how to make good use of them. Any suggestions for using mobil labs in elementary school are welcome here.

Classroom Level:
I made a pitch for using a content management system to develop a classroom writing community, which was positively received by the district technology coordinator. Last March when I requested database permissions on the district server there was a little bit of discussion about it. At first I thought it was going to be a big deal to get what I assumed would be a simple thing, and I felt like backing away from my request. The reaction I got was that, no, it wasn’t a big deal; it was a new deal. It was the first time anyone had made such a request. They’re going to set up an additional server now, to handle my project. Students won’t be blogging in the conventional (whatever that might be) sense, though. I think we’ll be using Drupal to publish a student literary journal. I want it to have a broad mission that encourages various forms of expression. My hope is that this might become a multi-class / multi-age writing community.

These are all exciting new technology developments that I see on the horizon for me and the teachers in my district. Our planning is starting to account for a changing internet in which website design is secondary to content, and in which authorship is open to many people. Our technology department also seems willing to assist teachers who want to pursue unconventional applications that further curricular goals. I wonder how this compares with other school districts?