I'm Tired. I'm Frustrated. I'm Angry.

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted last. Or maybe I can. I'm tired. I'm frustrated. And I'm angry. I'm tired of not having reliable access to the internet at school. I have been keeping a diary for the last year of all the network errors I encounter during the course of the day, and there are so many! This is just when I actually want to use it (of course, typically when a lesson revolved around something required on the internet); who knows how much more often it actually is! I'm frustrated. I've skipped out on ICT committee meetings since this time last year, when I realised that I am the only department person who shows up regularly, and that the meetings accomplish nothing for students/staff. I attended the most recent, briefly, which mostly discussed how we're going to keep the kids from using the new high-speed broadband network. I understand that while much of this is the laziness factor on the part of certain people, a part of it is also financial, and that's frustrating too. I'm angry. Our department had a vacancy last year, and it was advertised as "leading the school in technology integration." Well, thanks for the kind words! However, the person hired was NOT impressed when they arrived (from overseas). They feel a bit hustled. I'm not surprised. I'm angry my students can neither download or upload files for their work, and cannot view youtube at all! Needless to say, this put the breaks on our film wiki project. I ripped my DVD and dumped it into the student data file instead, but what a pain! This is after we were all told off for having too much stuff in our department folders that the server couldn't handle. Well, what do they expect when students have no access? If the kids had access to youtube, they could watch the bit of the film they are analysing without taking up server space. I'm angry the network went down three days in a row during report writing week, for hours at a time (as it does EVERY reporting period). I mean, seriously. If the network can't handle the traffic when it needs to, shouldn't it be UPGRADED? Nothing like last minute pressure to meet report deadlines (NOT EXTENDED [understandably]) during exams, marking, and managing groups of boys who have sat their exams and are ready for the holidays but there's still two weeks to go! If you think I'm angry, spare a thought for those poor staff members who took time away from their own families to work on reports from home using our remote server, which promptly went down and deleted all their work. I'm angry, no, I'm still really, really PEEVED OFF at last year's frustrating episode that some of you will remember. But I feel I have no recourse whatsoever. I'm still so angry about this that I am retraining myself with the ICT curriculum (that's my PD for this year) and considering a change. A major change. This year I've had so little access that the time it takes to set up blogs, wikis, and keeping all of it updated all the time just doesn't seem worth it. And that's sad. What's also sad is how little I feel this year. I no longer go in early, and I leave every day by 4pm. It means I'm super busy when I'm there, but I'm simply not prepared to continue to give and give and give of my home time when nothing changes on the other end. I'm not attending any conferences this year, which makes me sad, but I cannot justify the expense from my household budget when there's no implementation afterwards. Guess what else is sad? I find I'm understanding more and more why other staff simply can't be bothered to get wired. It does take a lot of your time. It does require ongoing upskilling. But...they will not actually be using it in the foreseeable future. Heck, my room doesn't even really have heat, doesn't have any a/c, and definitely doesn't have any computers. I'm tired of fighting for access. I'm frustrated that people still see students using computers as "playing," and I'm angry that I'm not able to prepare my students for their futures. But heck, they can use a pen and paper like nobody's business!

Network Blocking ARGH!

so, i've been so darn angry the last two weeks that i haven't bothered to write about it, hoping the situation would resolve itself. well, it's not going to resolve itself, and i just have to vent before making an appointment to speak with the headmaster.

last year i attended Ulearn08 with our headmaster and some other folks from my school. the net result was that this year we were going to have open internet access, among other cool stuff. well...

i came to school after our (too short) summer holiday and plugged in the network, used google chrome for various things, then went home. when i plugged my computer into my own modem, i couldn't load chrome, as "your network administrator has blocked your access to proxies. see him" (that's a paraphrase) came up. thinking it must be the browser i used, i tried internet explorer, only to find that the connections tab was missing altogether! i rang our NA at home, and he, wisely, neither answered nor returned my call. i was absolutely livid.

the next day i went straight to him, and was told that it was "possible" for a student with a laptop to access our proxy and use up our internet time. he added, "the ministry provides laptops for work, at work". he then tempered that with the info that he had only changed the proxy access on IE, and that chrome "must be borrowing the settings from IE, tell it to change them properly; then, d/l firefox, which should work fine for you at home".

so, downloaded firefox, which does work fine at home, BUT...

EVERYTHING is blocked! first, we couldn't access any video sites, then radio sites, now sites on metaphors, and today i couldn't even open my payslip in google docs! it's gotten so ridiculous i would be speechless if i just weren't so angry!

>>Site blocked. www.nbc.com is not allowed on this network.
>>This site was categorized as:
>>Television
>>Questions? Not properly categorized?

look, i get that school doesn't want staff hanging around on tradme, but come on! half of the english curriculum in nz is media studies! without access to media, how am i to teach my classes? and not using my laptop at home? where do they think i actually do MY work, after teaching all day?

and the idea that a student will use up all our allowance? c'mon! i've only ever seen 1 student here with a laptop, and he was a top boy! seriously, what is the percentage?

oh, and then to add insult to injury, on thursday all staff received an article in our inboxes, from the _principals' digests_, entitled "using the potential of facebook, youtube, and myspace" (none of which we can access, of course)! it carried the reports of a study, which i'm sure you've seen by now, with a vision of student today, and recommended: consideration of social networking sites for staff as well as classrooms, harnessing the educational value of chat rooms, instant messaging, blogs, and wikis, "ensur[ing] equitable access", and so on. was that supposed to be a joke? were they kidding? are they laughing in their offices about how frustrated we are?

the new nz curriculum calls for teaching students how to live in their future, utilising technology students use in their everyday lives. how can we do that if we, the teachers, do not have access? while i had planned a variety of exciting units for this year, at all different levels, i am seriously thinking of bagging all of them and simply using "chalk and talk". running into gigantic problems every time i want to do something new and relevant is becoming too big an obstacle. i am very close to giving up.

ARGH!

it seems like this technology business has more barriers than doorways.  with a barrier in front of each idea, it's no wonder teachers are slow to catch the technology train.  it's simply so much easier to keep doing what you've been doing instead.

i'm still in the process of having the year 9's research their topics to create newsmaker reports.  one of the technology problems is that our students are only allowed access to the internet via an internet log in (same for all).  any info they want to save needs to be put into a file, saved to that drive which is cleared every day (and different depending on which lab they are in), then they must log off, log in as themselves, and drag the file to their documents folder.  from there they can do what they wish - print or whathaveyou.  it's very time-consuming and aggravating!

problems with computers:  firstly, i don't have access to a lab during this class time.  prior to today, we have spent 3 days trying to do internet research (this is after print research, which we have already completed).  the first day the art projects were on display in the library in the computer section, which i booked over a term ago, and we could not access them.  the second day in the library computer section, none of the listed passwords would work.  the third day i got the mobile laptops instead, and the last person to use them hadn't plugged them in, so they were dead. ::pulling hair out::  three lessons down the gurgler and no research completed!

additionally, in all my wisdom (haha), i had decided that students could find the video of their choice (the group has a 20 second max video choice they can include in their news report), edit it in moviemaker as homework, and then email it, and any photos they wish to use, to their group leader, who would do the collating and make final decisions.  well, they can't access email on the school computers due to java, which is blocked on student log ins.  that means boys who live in the hostel have no email available to them at all.   ::sigh::  so for any, or what little video/photos we will have, i must handle the organisation of them all myself - what's the point of that exactly? to use up what little time i have on trivial matters rather than on the teaching of bigger issues, such as critiquing reputable sites?

my goodness, i could go on, but i think you get the point.  for every action, there is a (negative) reaction that results in very little being done, except for the creation of a very large headache.

so my questions today are:  how does your school handle internet access?  do all students have full access that they are responsible for, and a solid disciplinary measure for the few who are naughty?  do your students have java and full functioning programmes?  have you ever had a problem where a site has corrupted, via java, your network?  these are some of the questions i'd like some feedback on before going in to discuss this with my school group.  did you have to fight the good fight to get to where you are today (tech-wise), or was your school on board from the get-go?

thanks so much for any feedback!  i'm going to go outside, enjoy the sunshine for half an hour, and relax!