Venting…

Angie, at Many Hats, vented a bit yesterday, describing a Technology Standards meeting.

The argument was that teachers weren’t about to use PowerPoint or show things off of the computer because they didn’t have the LCD projector. I piped up about connecting the computer to a TV. Our coordinator mentioned that he had the cords to do this and some teachers were effectively doing this at one of our schools. Unfortunately, the idea was cut down because running it through a TV wasn’t as good going through an LCD projector. I wanted to scream!!!! (more here)

Well, it’s one of those issues that I can actually understand both sides of — but only when I divorce myself from the real issue at hand, that of preparing today’s children for their future. I commented on her blog with something like this…

I wasn’t there, but it sounds to me like there is a belief that educators will look for excuses not to change — not to modernize their classrooms. You have every reason to be frustrated. Who, more than teachers, should be willing and eager to learn new skills and new techniques for accomplishing their goals. It’s one of the real tragedies of modern education that the teacher must feel that he or she already knows it all in order to be a good teacher.

That said, I would say that your teachers, in the middle of 2006, have every right to expect to have an LCD projector permanently mounted in their classrooms. The conditions that prevent us from teaching from a 21st century information landscape (one that our students are already at home with) are not weather conditions, about which we have no control. They are a result of conscious decisions not to observe and understand today’s information environment. It is a conscious decision not to invest in modern classrooms.