Brent Adams

Better Technology for Students

Americans alike have spent billions on educational technology. What do we have to show for all the spending? Have teachers change their teaching with technology? The reality is that technology has improved communications and access to information. That's a good thing. Put computers in every classroom and we will revolutionize teaching. That was the idea back in the 20th century in educational circles across the land. Many experts sincerely believed that computers would somehow be a panacea for the legion of problems in our classrooms. They reasoned that the gains in productivity which technology had enabled in the business world could be copied in the classroom. Well, I think that they were right to a certain degree. Why? Because I believe that we don’t necessarily need computers in the classrooms, but at least some good quality material that helps the students learning facility, and also is up to date technology wise. One of our problems is that schools are spending money on things that should come second to education such as buying a five hundred thousand dollar football field. Things like athletics should come second to education. The West Orange High School budget for this school year is 20 million dollars. This money is to be used on school materials, such as books, buses etc. Students are being affected by this because the material schools are giving them is old and out of date. For instance, many head projectors at schools are garbage. The pages aren’t clear, the light bulbs are always dying, they are always blurry, and they get in the way of peoples sight. Simple solutions have been since introduced. The “Smart Board” has been used in classrooms, but only a select few teachers have them, and many of those teachers struggle using them. Another problem faced is that schools are starting to use portables as permanent classrooms, which is not what they are made for. The portables begin to wear down and the heating and cooling systems begin to break. This creates a bad learning environment for the students. The reason they buy poor technology is because they are spending all the money on things that are irrelevant to the education of the students.
	
February was the 40th anniversary of an important event in Florida history. In 1968, Florida teachers and other education workers belonging to the Florida Education Association staged the nation's first statewide teachers' strike and focused the state's attention on public education. Low pay for teachers made Florida noncompetitive with other states for high-quality employees. The cause of the strike was the chronic under funding of the state's educational system at a time when attendance was rising greatly. Although a special session of the Legislature approved more school funding, the budget increases didn't solve the problem. Forty years later, teacher salaries still were as low as nearly $6,000 below the national average and the situation is equally crucial for all the other important positions in our public schools, like bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, and so on. Forty years ago, public school employees took a courageous stand to point out the problem, but Florida's political leaders continue to ignore the needs of our public schools. Constantly people complain abut Florida becoming competitive in the 21st century global economy, yet our political leaders continue to refuse to make significant investments in our future.
	

If we continue to have poor technology in our classrooms, the people will be the ones affected. The people will be affected in that the condition of all of the technology will basically just suck. It will be just a flat out uncomfortable environment. There could be an end to the world if this continued. Everyone will just be mad and crazy, and education will be way out of whack. Hoping to have good solutions for poor technology would be a great advantage
To ensure that technology is effectively integrated into the schools, educators and community members must help to create a formal technology plan. To be successful, a technology plan must have meaningful learning to provide for the needed professional development and support, and respond flexibly to change. Schools that effectively use technology have a carefully designed technology plan that is a part of the overall school-improvement plan. A technology plan that is not basic to the overall improvement plan is likely to be non-consistent. As part of the school-improvement plan, technology should support the curricular goals of the school. I believe this approach is the most effective for our situation. If we have an ongoing technology upgrade plan then it will be way easier to keep adequate technology in the class. 
	Overall, the means for my solution would be quite effective. Better equipment in a classroom will better everyone that is there. If the school can make it so that everyone is in the same type of learning environment at all times instead of having one child freeze in a class, and another child have to worry about burning up every 5 seconds, it would be a complete change in the way people learn. Teachers alike will have good equipment to teach with, causing them to be happier, and students to learn more, and learn it at a steadier rate.

To conclude my thoughts, the lack of funding for new technology in our schools is a drastic problem in our society. Basically put, many schools don’t have the proper funding to update the technology, but many schools just waste the money on other useless things. This leads to students not even want to learn because he/she feels uncomfortable. I still don’t see why we are beginning to use portables as permanent classrooms, I guess because they are cheap. So what do we do? We just buy a bunch of them, when we could just be replacing them with well structured buildings. If we could make schools a much more comfortable place to learn and have new technology which would make teaching easier, then students and teachers would be much happier and the schools would be improved greatly. There are ways to help in your community to make this happen. The educational board members can propose ideas for a technology plan so that our overall school system will be improved. Hopefully some day, this big ordeal will be solved, Maybe in my children’s generation, maybe in my grandchildren’s generation. One thing is for certain, it is definitely going to take work and effort to make it a remarkable change.