Hardware Difficulties

While starting the implementation of my action research project on September 18, 2012, I ran into a problem with finding laptop computers for my students to use. The campus I work on does have several computer labs, but I did not want to take my students to a computer lab. I wanted to start the project with my students being in their won classroom environment, which is more comfortable for me and them. Also, I encourage the students to use multiple types of resources when researching information; therefore, I point them in the direction of dictionaries that I have in the classroom and the textbooks. So, in order to maintain my style of teaching, I signed up on our school program, eduphoria, for a laptop cart that was located in the Freshmen wing.

On the day that I was to start using the laptop cart, I could not find the cart. However, an ipad cart was in it's place and I was not allowed to use these technology because I had not been trained to use the ipads. When I asked what happened to the laptop cart, the technology person on our campus stated that it did not exist anymore and had been removed from the campus. However, the technology person and I went to our curriculum administrator and found another laptop cart from the vocational department that was not being used. But the obstacle were not totally alleviated with this transition because two days into my use of the cart and implementation of my action research, another teacher had signed up for using the vocational laptops, which I was now using because the Freshman cart no longer existed. This problem was cleared because I happened to be in a training on that day and students are not allowed to use the laptops without teacher supervision. So we were both able to get the use of the laptops.     

In conclusion, as a core teacher and a grad student, this scenario is very frustrating to me and calls for solutions. I teach social studies and our department does not have a laptop cart for use. We are required to teach the technology skills as required by the state and federal government but are lacking the necessary hardware. Also, as a grad student, I am having a difficult time procuring the hardware to do my project applications. Solutions to this would be to find ways for funding so that students have the supplies that they need, which is fast becoming a laptop computer. I have resulted to allowing students to use their smart phones in order to do research in class, then have only one or two days of actual computer use for web 2.0. While I am sure that my campus is not the only campus in the state of Texas having this issue, it does bring to light the gap between the accountability and standards that the government expects schools to maintain but do not find the funding to provide the tools.