These challenges came from a group of K-12 teachers. The problems don't seem unique but the time constraints seem enormous.

* A high school English department, 3,000 students, seeing 70 to 100 students per day! with extra-curricular activities on top

Challenges:
- time necessary to make a strong case to the superintendent of schools (3 colleagues also attending Epiphany Workshop).
- technology person to provide help when we need it. There was a technology person who was hired by the hour to troubleshoot the entire school last year, but teachers were told not to stop him and ask "frivolous" questions! (WHAT are those?)
- Already doing too many jobs with too little time.

 

*Second high school teacher:

- hardware and software not in place
- staff not adequately trained
- certain faculty are resistant to change
- TIME to prepare meaningful lessons.
- Very structured domain (time): 5 classes/day, 1 hr. for planning,
interacting, grading, technology training.

 

* Third HS teacher at a small public HS, ranks high academically, very supportive superintendent (of technology):

- Computer resources: would like consistent access to at least 10 machines with word processing on them and at least one with Internet access.
- Time to train and lots of it: would prefer to have it funded over the summer so that she would have time to plan more thoroughly for the following year.

* Fourth HS teacher:

- costs involved
- the inequality of students who cannot afford computers at home and thus do not have the level of reinforcement that other, more affluent students have.
- lack of training and cost of implementing that training.
- no full or part-time staff to troubleshoot and provide technological backup.

 

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