Think about ICT in a Low SES School.

Another super serious post about the trials and tribulations of working at a Low SES school in a rough part of Melbourne. I wanted to follow up my previous post with something a bit more light hearted but I seem to be going home and reflecting on not simply my own personal issues in the classroom, but both the state of the School's budget as well as the culture towards ICT by the staff as well. I would like to preface my next paragraph with a story. On a Wednesday afternoon, after school had finished of course, I attended a year 7 and 8 staff meeting about innovative ways to use ICT in the classroom. Now this meeting began with the following statement "Let's pretend that our three school projectors work, the laptops don't take 20 minutes to log into the school network and that the school network doesn't crash every hour", I found this an interesting yet pragmatic way to begin a staff meeting. Apart from being slightly pessimistic about using ICT in the classroom, I threw in my 2 bob just for a laugh about using PREZI.

We all have these little moments.......

I was met with the following statement "I've used Prezi, it would take two or three lessons to teach them how to use it, you're entering dangerous territory", I of course kept my mouth shut, me being the student teacher and all. Now if you didn't quite pick up what the inference was, here it is, instructional classes on using presentation programs would be a waste of time with students that are well known for challenging behavior. I found the whole meeting confronting for a number of reasons but I will just point my main two issues:

1. This school is clearly suffering due to its current budget, 

2. Staff are jaded about using ICT due to a collection of behavior management issues, poor resources and their own misunderstandings about technology.

I often feel like this when I come home from staff meetings.

As you can tell from this post and my last post I'm struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I promise that my next post will be exciting! Until then look at what I did in Photoshop today.