At our faculty meeting yesterday, we spent quite a while talking about the technology issues we've been having in our school. Well, since Mr. E and I are the only ones who ever contact our IT guys, we got put in charge of talking to them about the list. I guess I was only in charge of talking to them about installing a SMARTboard in my room. We had a board donated to our school by 3M and they planned to deliver it to our school Friday afternoon (yes, it is currently leaning against a wall in my room, but more on that later). Since my science lessons are all in SMARTboard software format, I wanted to get this thing up and running so I didn't have to change everything over to powerpoint!
Last night, I didn't feel like calling the IT guys, so I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off... and never called them. This morning, Mr. E came into my room five minutes before the bell rang and asked if I had talked to them at all. Nope. So we decided I should send them an email.
Three minutes before the bell rang: I'm sitting at my desk, frantically trying to send an email to the IT guys about installing this board after school today while six 6th graders are talking to me all at once, "Miss H, can I say memory work? Can we do a play for religion? Did you feed Joe today? Can we work on memory work during Word-Work? Want to hear what happened after school yesterday?" Yikes! Needless to say, the email I sent wasn't my best work. I remember pressing the send button and thinking, "Hmm, maybe I should look this over one more time... nah, the IT guys won't care." Well... maybe I should've listened to myself...
Lunch time: Mr. E comes into our classroom while everyone is eating. He says that he just called the IT guys and told them about everything on our list. And the one guy was "on fire" about the email I sent him this morning. Now, normally when Mr. E says "on fire," it's not a good thing. The IT guy said that they like to be asked to do things, not told that they have to do them. And he had half a mind to not install the board at all this weekend just to prove his point. Sigh. So then I decided to send another email explaining about the first one I had sent... but first I had to do recess duty.
After lunch, I tried to send another email, but didn't have enough time, so I saved it as a draft and got the 7th and 8th graders situated. We had to adjust our schedule because the 7th and 8th graders had a guest speaker coming at 1:00 and we couldn't meet at our normal time. I'm really glad I didn't send that email, because it didn't have quite the right tone and my mind was clearer after school.
We squeezed three speakers in for 7/8th geography, they went back to their room for a speaker, my 6th graders came back for science, then we switched to art, followed by 6th grade recess and 7/8th grade science. Yep, the 7/8th graders came back to my room for the last half hour of the day. We were doing Mystery Class. It's amazing how focused they are on their work. Every time we do this activity, I'm impressed. While they were recording data and making graphs, the people dropped off the board.
And then I realized that they weren't donating a SMARTboard, they were donating some kind of interactive board I had never heard of before. After a little more research (Mr. E handing me a packet of papers), I discovered that we are now the owners of a TeamBoard. I wanted to do some searching on the internet, but the 7/8th graders were writing down information that was pulled up on my computer. The freeze button on my remote doesn't work either, so I was kind of stuck. So I had to wait until after school to do that. And send another email.
So. The email is sent. The board is against the wall. Will I get it installed by Monday? I don't know. It seems pretty simple: hang the board up, plug the USB into the computer, you're good to go. But if that's the case, maybe the board should go in someone else's room that doesn't have a projector???
To end on a better note: I finally have a picture of Joe, our tortoise
He's still crabby, but I'm pretty sure he's eating and drinking at night.
No comments:
Post a Comment