Living the Dream: Technology in Urban Schools

Lately, I have been thinking about what most students, teachers and administrators can expect in terms of technology in big box urban schools. I am sure there are other items, but here is what I have come up with so far...

You can expect that most classrooms in urban schools will have one computer that is usually dedicated for teacher use. You can expect that the teacher will only use the one workstation for work related activities such as attendance, communication, and grade keeping. These low level activities also include email and using Microsoft Office products scarcely. The highest activity occurring on teacher workstations, is internet browsing for personal interest.

You could expect that urban schools only have a handful of LCD projectors and the teachers who use them the most often use them for video playing and only pull them out once in a while. Often times you find the overhead projector getting more use then an LCD projector.

You could also expect to find a few to zero laptops dedicated for student use. You could expect to find very few if at all any color printers. SmartBoards or Interactive Boards are rare and few in between. Most are located in classrooms that has teachers who are very comfortable with technology. You also find them in rooms that the teacher may have no familiarity with the technology, but has indicated an interest in learning how to use it. The follow through and training is rarely present to help that teacher.

Printers, are also far in and few in schools. Often printers are located scarcely throughout a building with not enough of them being centrally located. Copiers are also very scarce often urban schools with 70 plus teaching staff members have no more then two available to them, and many times only have one. Copiers are often not found setup for network printing so teachers, students and administrators could rarely use them remotely throughout the school building.

Digital cameras, camcorders are scarce and very often non-existent for teacher and student use.

Computer labs are strictly dedicated for a content area and very few buildings have space for open use labs. Mobile laptop carts would alleviate this scarcity.

So what's my point, well if we are to improve urban education we need to provide access to current resources and tools. We need to provide teachers and administrators with exposure and training on using such tools to improve the overall educational experience for students in urban schools. There is a huge disparity of exposure from schools from state to state as well as within the same city. If we are to allow students of color an opportunity to succeed in the 21st Century then we must incorporate the use of technology in everything we do. The longer we wait the bigger the gap, and the further minorities will be at being able to access the digital jobs that now exist.

The time is now to integrate cutting edge technology. Let us not do it for a grant, or as a partnership with another organization but let us do it because it is the right thing to invest in.

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¡Viviendo el Sueño! (Living the Dream!)
Mr. Anibal Soler, Jr.
http://www.anibalsoler.com
http://anibalsoler.blogspot.com