SLL 2.0, Week 3, Thing 7

More Time Please.

Technology is an amazing thing. When I first went to work as a media specialist over 30 years ago almost nothing being used today existed. One of the coolest pieces of technology that my school had was an ancient cabinet about 5 foot tall filled with stereoscopic viewers and hundreds of cards with geography pictures from all over the world dating back to the 1920's. The kids loved it.

Over the years we have added more and more diverse technology. Teachers in my small rural district have the usual overhead projectors, cassette and CD players, VCRs, DVD players, DVD recorders, and TVs. They also have access to PDAs, digital cameras, digital movie cameras, LCD projectors, and laptop and desktop computers. Nothing too avant-garde but every one of these items requires a level of tech expertise. In addition every vcr, every projector, and every computer works a little differently. Just because you can run one LCD projector doesn't mean that you can run another. Every piece of equipment is different.

That is just the equipment. Then there is the software. Every computer program has a learning curve and is changed (updated) every few months. When teachers come back to school this year they will have to re-learn how to use most of the software and some of the equipment that they used last year since it will be updated or replaced over the summer.

Then there is the Internet. Every site works differently. Every site requires the user to sign up, register, provide user names, passwords, etc. In taking this course I have had to register at three different sites. They require the latest plug ins and browsers, all of which must be downloaded. As a media specialist nearly every company that I purchase from has a website and requires me to log in to use it. Remembering all of the logins is a full time job. All of these things work differently depending on what OS you are using, the type of computer that you use, and the network setup, firewall, virus protector, and spam blockers that are present.

Teachers can be forgiven if they are developing a fear of technology. They can spend endless hours learning how to do something, getting it set up, and teaching their students to use it, only to have everything undone when the tech person changes a setting on the firewall. Even kids are becoming technophobic. I have been working on this tutorial for School Library Learning 2.0 for several days now and have spent hours and hours figuring out how this all works. Who knows if I will be able to remember how to do everything I have learned. I would never have time to do this during the school year. A check of the blogs on the SLL 2.0 site shows that many of them have not been updated for weeks. I am sure that time is the limiter.

The biggest technology challenge for teachers and the media specialists that serve them is going to be finding time to weed through which technologies are the most important, finding time to set them up, learn to use them, and then actually implement them.

Time may be THE most important technology requirement.