Scenarios: Doing the Best You Can With What You Have

“The purpose of the portfolio drives all other decisions.”

Scenario #1

You are in a small rural school of 150 students with limited technology. There is no kindergarten in your district. The school houses grades 1 through 8. Your kids go to a regional high school. Your school has dialup internet connections that are not very reliable. Your district does not have a technology integrator. While each classroom does have a computer, there is no computer lab. There are 6 computers in the library.

Scenario #2

You are in one of 7 elementary schools in your district. It’s a large district with approximately 4000 students in K-12. Your school has a computer lab which is shared with an adjoining middle school. You also have a shared technology integrator for your middle/elementary school, and a technology coordinator for the district. Your school has high speed internet access, and new computers and software in the technology labs.

Scenario #3

You are in a medium sized middle school housing grades 6 – 8 of about 300 students. Your school does not have a computer lab, or a technology director. The school board is not supportive of any initiatives that cost money to the townspeople. Classrooms have 2 or 3 old computers in them, which were donations from a local business. You do not have a lot of server space, and internet access is limited to the 5 computers in the library.

Scenario #4

You are in a district with one large elementary school (K-6) of 700 students and one large middle school (7-8) of 300 students. The school buildings are relatively new, and equipped with new technology and computer labs. Each building has a technology coordinator. Technology skills are taught as one of the specials by the tech coordinator. Your students have individual logins to the system. You do have several teachers in both buildings who are veteran teachers with no desire to use technology in their classroom.

Scenario #5

You are in a medium sized district with a K-8 school and a high school. There are about 1000 students in the district. Each of your schools has a computer lab, and there is a technology coordinator for the district. The district has adopted an initiative that focuses on integrating technology into the content. The school board is supportive of the tech integration initiative; however, there is a growing pool of teachers that resist having “one more thing to do”. Buy in from the faculty is slow. While your computers are somewhat old, the district has promised to replace them soon.

Scenario #6

You are in a small rural school district with 500 students. Your school has an old computer lab, but does not have internet access. Your students are taught keyboarding and word processing, but little else. A few of your teachers attempt to integrate technology skills into their curricula, but the majority do not. The school board is not very concerned with the new ICT standards, even though they were advised of them.