We have about 60 3-year-old iBooks in the building (that’s like one 180 year old computer, I think?). They are nice machines, they are just not very stable. Part of it is wear and tear, part of it is just age, and no small measure is the flakiness of our network and server. It can be SO hard to get teachers to actually use technology, and then to have it fail them….endlessly… it’s really asking too much of people already overstretched. I work at a mid-sized middle school (just over 500 kids) and along with the laptops, I work in a (beautiful) 30 station iMac lab, next door to a 30 station eMac lab. Additionally, every teacher has a desktop computer, the office has a couple of stations, and there are probably another dozen or so computers scattered about in the library and resource centre. If we were a business, we’d have a full time IT guy. If we were sensible, we would at least have some release time for me to try to trouble shoot some of the issues and affect a solution. I don’t have enough training or time to do it now…

Bah. Maybe something magical will happen over Spring Break…..