The quality of a schools education is directly associated with the funding that they receive. In the United States schools are separated by the digital divide. As highlighted in the graph to the right, education only recieves 4% of the national discretionary money and the military receives over half. This 4% must be divided between states, districts and schools, which turns out to be not very much funding. The digital divide is caused by the various amounts of funding that schools receive in order to purchase and sustain technology. Some schools have barely enough money for new textbooks, while others are able to provide personal Mac books for each student. How is everyone supposed to receive the same education when they are using different materials? The answer is clear, they are not receiving the same education.Even if some schools are able to afford new technology, they are not leaving room in the budget to train their teachers. Teachers have a hard enough time creating lesson plans, prepare materials and stay up to date on grades, let alone finding time to figure out new technology on their own. Without proper training technology isn't being used to its full potential and goes to waste, ultimately wasting the schools budget money.
This year I volunteered at a local 4j Elementary School. The school had recently bought smartboards for every classroom, which is a great interactive tool that can be used by teachers and students. In the classroom that I volunteered in I noticed that the teacher never used her smartboard. When I asked her about it she said that "smartboards are more helpful for teaching younger aged students, not for teaching at the fifth grade level." It was clear to me that she was not properly trained in using the smartboard, therefore not willing to use it. Many teachers have this same viewpoint and don't see the problem with using old teaching methods, without technology, to educate their students. This is only hurting the progress of technological education.
With adequate funding and proper training for all teachers technology can be a breath of fresh life into the classroom. In Debbie Tschirgin's article Sustainable Classroom Technology she believes that "with carefully selected solutions, lessons can easily and instantly become visually rich and interactive," with technology. Also in Debbie's article she explains the importance of integrating a document camera into the classroom. This camera allows instructors to place documents or 3D objects underneath the lends, while projecting the image through a LCD projector, monitor, TV or computer. This makes it easy for students to see documents that a teacher is referring to or determine the similarities and differences of a 3D object. The document camera is very easy to use and can easily be integrated into any classroom. It also requires very little training and will last for over five years. Not all technology has to be a puzzle for teachers to solve, some can be easily integrated by even the worst techies.
In order to save the environment and reduce material usage states have been incorporating going green efforts into schools. Doing this not only reduces the amount of trash that schools are producing, but also educates students in how to help the environment. I was happy to see that at the 4j school I volunteered at they were not just stopping with recycling papers and plastics, they created a school compost and garden as well. This got the kids excited about separating trash because extra food would eventually become nutrients for the plants that they were growing.
