Reflections-+Ch+5

__**MAY DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:**__

‍ **Chapter 5 pp. 115 -138**
==‍ **-In Chapter 5, the authors have listed four areas (hurdles) that school districts need to get right in order to ensure success of learning networks. Discuss each of these and how your school district is c hanging to help support network learning.** ==

**1) Money, Politics, and Technology**
===Akron-Westfield is currently at this point--we are talking about going to a partial 1-to-1 school. The same issue keep coming up-MONEY. We are going to be issuing a new tax/levy to fund our 1-to-1 program, but we will not have the money until the 2013-2014 school year. This puts us behind most of the other schools in our area. We will also face a challenge with the school board--the majority did not see why a school-wide wifi network would be beneficial. We will need to spend time education our board in order to educate our students using 21st century technology.===

**2) Technical Support**
===By not having the funding to move forward now, we have more time to prepare our teachers and staff in adapting to the change that technology will bring. We have started updating the infrastructure--we have school wide wifi, a large bandwidth, and 2 new computer cart labs. We are still looking at some options and weighing our choices regarding: a LMS; whether to go with Microsoft or LibreOffice or GoogleDocs; do we want to be Mac or pc based; etc.===

**3)School Policies**
===This is the biggest obstacle we face. It seems the school board would ban many sites, and out filter bans others. (Luckily our Tech guy is willing to work with teachers regarding web-based applications they want to use.) We have a responsible use policy in place, but will need to be modified as we move forward.===

**4) Resistance to Change**
=== I am not sure how we will do with this hurdle. Many teachers are excited about the opportunity for additional technology, others are not. I believe some like the idea of technology but may not know how to utilize the machines to their fullest potential. While writing the school technology curriculum with a handful of other teachers, I was surprised at how little other teachers knew of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. This will definately need to be an area we focus a lot of professional development time in. If we do not, we will have challenges moving forward. ===

‍ Epilogue pp. 139 - 141
==‍ -How do you think you can change from being a content specialist who dispenses knowledge as a commodity to a classroom facilitator who helps students grow the skills for their own learning through worldwide learning networks? == ===The biggest change I need to make is moving from a teacher that answers questions to a facilitator who teaches students how to search for answers. I still find myself answering questions too often. When I do tell a student to search for themselves, they do not always understand why I will not answer their question.===