Bud the Teacher

    You were warned.  This is a bit of a rant — something I try never to do here on this blog.  But, I feel like if I don’t get some of this stuff out, I’m going to abandon blogging, and I certainly don’t want to do that. 
    I made arrangements with my old principal to have a classroom set of wireless laptops available for our students last Spring.  We requested the money from a district capital reserve account and the district granted our request, as well as a request to put a SMARTBoard in my classroom.
    Four months went by.  I returned to school and began looking for the computers.
    They weren’t there.  And they still aren’t.  I was promised by the gentleman in charge of such purchases that I’d have them by Christmas.  Maybe. 
    That simply isn’t good enough.  I understand busy, and I understand being understaffed, as the district’s technology folks are, but I’m getting tired of waiting.   I had plans to get students blogging on a regular basis.  Now, I can’t put them in front of computers often enough to do so.   Am I being foolish to assume that seven months is too long to wait for equipment once the money has been approved?
    In August, I bought some server space and put a Moodle on it so that I could be able to manage my own resources when it came to student work and server space. The district folks are pretty busy, and I wanted to save them the trouble.   My administrators have been quite supportive of that work and how we’ve looked after students. 
    Now I’m ready to do the same for hardware.  Anyone know where I can get $20,000 or so for a classroom set of laptops and some other wireless equipment? 
    Heck — let’s go for broke.  If we get our own Internet pipe, we won’t have to deal with the filters, either. 
    Okay — now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.  Thanks for making it this far.