Fancy programs on aging computers: an MMSD teacher tries to make things work

From time to time, I wonder whether MMSD's central administration decisions take into account the needs of staff in our schools. Here's a recent letter to the school board from a middle school teacher discussing the poor fit between software and hardware at the school.

"I came in very early this morning to run new student summaries for several of my kids who had decided to make up missing work in order to raise their grades. I think we would all agree that this is a good thing.

I spent 15 minutes trying to get my computer to print one student's summary. The computer kept locking up on me and I would have to cold boot it. Actually, this is not my computer; it is the only computer in the planning area shared by 6 eighth grade teachers. It runs Windows 98.

As I was complaining about this computer, one of my colleagues mentioned that she has to phone in her attendance each hour about 1/3 of the time because the computer in her classroom either locks up or takes too long to process her attendance. Our tech person has been out several times and is able ! to fix it for awhile, but then it stops functioning properly again.

I have had a similar situation in my classroom. The teacher who is in there first each day timed it and it takes about 7 minutes to boot it up in the morning.

My special education partner just read this note and asked me to add that she was trying to work after school yesterday in the library with some students and the computers in there kept freezing up.

You are asking us to use sophisticated programs on antiquated machinery and it's causing a great deal of stress for staff and students.

And yes, I am filling out a work order for this computer."

Posted by Ruth Robarts at October 10, 2006 11:39 AM
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