I was reading Bill Kerr’s blog and well the thing is, I don’t work in the public service anymore, I miss working in those secondary schools, I thought I had a lot to contribute to state funded education not just my technical skills but also my knowledge of quality resources available under copyleft licenses after all aside from wages copright is the highest cost in education. Now I have to move on and take better care of myself and find ways to survive.
The main thing I thought is that teachers shouldn’t be the ones to get involved in political activism, the tech community should do that but that would be unprofessional?
Ive seen it first hand, the @*&#$ @&)*&#@ would walk in and say “what have you done to the computer now!?!?” and take over and tell them off and dominate them, I walk in and do the opposite, “what has the computer done to you this time?” and try out my pedagogical ideas, sure I have a bias for giving control of technology back to the teachers, umm isn’t that whats its #&*@& there for?
Its all so obvious, the infrastructure is designed to dominate and divide them and if they want to climb the ladder they have to promote the products as educational tools, the big problem is that they give one teacher the network administrator position and from then on its social politics, their friends or phoney brown nosing friends get first choice of all the new equipment and in the help desk system their friends problems get priority.
A teacher hugged me once, I broke the rules and solved her 6mth old problem, her computer would randomly reboot so I just replaced it, apparently “she was a witch who complained all the time for no reason”. I could go on and on about these types of experiences, after months of ridicule, guess what happens to your volunteer lab and the students who visit during student free time when they finally realise that free software isn’t non-commercial. Guess what you’re meant to tell the kids about their contributions to certain projects if the network admin/teacher guy thinks youre working on a commercially viable software solution.
I like to think I’m mentally tough but something creates a chemical reaction in the brain and maybe given enough time I’ll find a better way to cope with that.