- Who are the people at your school in charge of the technologies available to advance the learning of students? Identify as many of these people as possible:
- My teacher told me that last year there was a technology teacher that was a mastermind who had left the school last year. Since then, they have hired a JCU grad as their new technology teacher.
- Details of what technology is available, where it’s located, quantities of technologies (i.e. is there a classroom set of iPads for the students to work with)?’
- Overall, within the school they use iPads, Chromebooks, and Macs. The teachers are given and required to use the Mac. In terms of students, the technologies that are shared are kept in the school library on charging blocks. There is a school set of iPads, one to one number of Chromebooks, and each classroom has a SMARTBoard.
- Are the technologies readily available and are they in working order? How do students and teachers gain access? Is there a means for reserving them? Are there required purchases by families?
- All of the student devices are in working condition. Kindergarten through 4th grade have to share the (x) number of iPads that are available. Grades 5-8 however, do have constant access to individual chromebooks. However, some of the SMARTBoards are in the process of being replaced as they are not fully working. The one in my classroom is one of those as the touch screen is not fully functioning but it still does the basic projection and sound.
- What is the nature of the firewall blocking access to applications? Is there a process to transcend or move around the firewall? Who is in control? What is available and what is blocked and why?
- Yes there is. This is put in place to keep students from being on websites and apps that they are not supposed to be on. They also have a program that monitors the students screens on these given devices and that is called Go Guardian.
- Significantly, pay close attention to and document who you are speaking with. What is their role or do they have a title? Who is able to direct you to the people with the most information? Who has the most and/or best information?
- When speaking about this, I talked to both my cooperating teacher and my school principal.
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