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Technical Troubles in My Area
This post was inspired by Carla R.’s comment on my first one. Carla wondered if teachers in my area have problems with technology. The sad situation is that many of the teachers in my town, as I come from a small, not very advanced town, are reluctant to use technology in their classes in any way. They think that it’s a luxury beyond thier grip or their students’ realization. A very few English teachers would care to explore and learn about educational technology. This is mostly the case in government run schools.
The fact that most schools do not have advanced computer labs adds to the problem. Even if the labs are available, they are in the custory of narrow-minded technicians who see technology as a brooch to ornament the school when a high stake visitor comes.
So, it’s a multi-layered problem. Wanna hear your say here.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Dear Lilian,
Technology can be a problem in some schools, and it becomes a bigger problem if the teachers are afraid of it. I think that happens a lot. Sometimes they just say it is not important or that they don’t need it, but the truth is they don’t know how to use it and are afraid to say. We teachers mustn’t be reluctant in saying that we don’t know something, and that we should try to learn. It is very important for us be LEARN, LEARN, LEARN, and it makes us feel so good inside. That’s what’s been happening to me during this course.
By the way, I’ve linked your blog to mine. Check it out.
Angela
January 24th, 2008 at 9:45 am
This is simply amazing, Angela! I’ve also linked my blog to yours. Can’t wait for Week 3 when we learn more tips to link blogs.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Nice to see you found a way to link your blog to your friends’ blog. Way to go!
Erika
January 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Hi Lilian, what a great change in your blog. I think the last time I visited it, it had a different template. I looooove this one.
You are right, many people think and unfortunately perceive computers and internet as something that belogs just to techies in a computer lab, but there are so many and exciting new and easy to manage tools that can be handled by regular people that the future looks very promising, don´t you think?
Warm regards from cool Caracas, Berta
January 31st, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hi, “technical problems” was eye-catching for me. In my area(Rosario, Argentina)my telephone line has been cut for a week! So while learning about connecting and commenting, I wonder how frustrating it all can become when I come back to school next week. Of course, my enthusiasm about learning RSS and tagging is still alive!
Lovely flower you´ve chosen.
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:57 am
Hi, this post interests me because it addresses the topic of a book being launched by Joy Egbert with me as editor for Africa and Middle East. I see you are at AUC, and the book is about how educators are overcoming challenges of the kind that you describe. How would you feel about writing more on this topic as a chapter or a part of this chapter in this book? If interested get in touch with me, and blog out some more ideas on this issue and how you deal with them in your context, common to many of us throughout the world. – Vance
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:05 am
Edita,
I’ve been experiencing something similar to your problem. Our communication cables under the Mediterranean have had problems since Wednesday morning and ADSL service didn’t work until late yesterday. With this workshop going on, and with me working on the last assignment in an online course, I was feeling awfully nervous. Today I even had a power cut for about 3 hours, but I managed to use the dial-up modem and my laptop to update my blog and catch up with Week 3 tasks.
It’s frustrating how technical problems can block us from moving ahead when we are eager to.
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:44 am
Dear Lilian,
I’d like to thank you vry much for this wonderful effort. I think this area is very important in our schools as it is a new area. It will appeal to many EFL educators in Egypt because technology is begining to spread widely in our school but unfortunately neither many teachers nor our classrooms are ready to use it.We need to train teachers in CALL on a large scale in order to prepare them for it.
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Dear Lilian,
Congratulations on this interesting discussion you’ve fostered! This is an essential topic if we want technology integration to be a reality in our educational systems. As you said, it is not enough to have the facilities, but also to have teachers who are willing to explore the possibilities of a new learning environment.
The paradigm shift is underway. I agree with Hamdy Habib. Teacher training is the key!
It’s great to see you already have readers from Egypt. Way to go!
Big hugs from Argentina,
Carla R.
BTW, you mentioned you are working on an final assignment for an online course. Me too! Is it an E- Teacher course. I’ve just finished TBE.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 pm
unbelievable, Carla. I’ve just finished TBE as well. I was in class 2. Which class were you in?
Can’t believe how technology can bring us together!
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
Dear Lilian,
I was in Room 3! In fact, I was planning to write a post about the final assignment since I also wrote one when I learned about the scholarship. I’ll let you know as soon as I publish it. I’ll tag my post TBE.
How about an Egypt-Argentina connection?
Let’s keep in touch!
Hugs, Carla R.
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Carla,
I’m starting to see the similarities between not only the two of us, but our teaching contexts and countries, technically and technologically speaking.
I believe we can establish a connection in something like BE and technology, since these are two areas of interest and expertise to both of us.
Let’s think it over and see what we can do.
Warm greetings from cold Egypt
February 5th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Done Lilian!
You can check out our Final Assignment here:
http://carlaraguseo.edublogs.org/2008/02/06/tbe-final-assignment/
Hugs
February 7th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Hi Lillian,
Iwant to tell you about my experience. I a teacher of English language in a secondary school. I took the initiative and asked my seniors to provide a classroom for me. Fortunately, they found me a spare room. I prepared the room to be a language lab. I found great support from my seniors. They provided me with an OHP, an LCD and a computer is on the way. I started to log onto the internet and get texts and pictures to enhance my teaching material and method. Whenever there was a technical problem, I referred to the multi-media officials and they never failed to provide me with guidance. I invite you to come and see everything. Now, I no longer go to students in their room. They come to my lab and they leave their books and notebooks there. This is a new experiment in a government school. I hope you’ll be able to visit us in Shobralkhema Secondary School for Girls, Shobralkhema,Cairo.
Thanks,
Saeed Awad
February 7th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Hi Lillian,
Sorry about the silly mistake in the first line. I am a teacher of English language. I also wish to tell you that I used the technology for carrying out pair and group work. It helped much and did well.
Thanks for giving us this opportunities and I don’t know if this service is available to any teacher who is interested. Can they sign up or is it exzclusive to COTE graduates like myself?
Thanks again
February 7th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Hi Saeed,
I’m really impressed! Can’t really believe that there’s such understanding and supportive administration in government schools. You’re really fortunate to have one in your school.
Yet, this supports what I’m discussing in my later post(http://lolitablog.edublogs.org/2008/02/05/technical-problems-the-human-factor/) that teachers are the main factor in integrating technology.
By the way, this is a free service to everybody around the globe. You can join us in the EVO workshop (blogging4educators@yahoogroups.com) to learn more about it.
Cheers,
Lilian
February 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Having lost my RSS feeds to my new “student’s bloggs” for the second time, grrrrr, it made me think how my computerphobe collegues (at the university here in France) expect all things computeresque to work instantaneously.
One key aspect of technical problems is finding the right balance between spending too much time on them, and learning from mistakes. And of course, the whole situation of learning from mistakes – for some teachers – is too traumatic (I mean when they are back to the level of first grade in the subject!)
Sounds like you’re doing great work Soeed – as Lilian said, the blogging4educators is for everybody – vive la technologie! – a great leveller!