3 posts tagged “teachers”

I think I lost my thin blood from Southern living.  It's honestly too hot outside today.  Wow.  And my office?  Sweltering.  Too bad I'm working unpaid overtime tonight.  It's been a busy, busy day!  Grr.

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I hear the whispers, although I tend to choose to ignore them I'm not ignorant on what people believe or think about me, my "job" as a building technologist, or how much time a day I spend out of sight.  It's true that educators have a certain "air" about them, they value degrees like badges on their lapels, something to be shiny and sparkly and in sight for all to see.  They tend to look down on those who aren't as "educated" in the ways of formal education.  They also tend to have short insight on things outside of their happy-little-inbred-circles.  Such are the politics in the education world. 

However, just as they have little clue on the insight of my day-to-day atmosphere, they feel the need to let each other know how little I do for the building, how I'm "always out of sight, hidden away in my office goofing off", or how I don't put in the hours that they do, or this, that, and the other thing.  So a while back I decided I'd write down one day, fire by fire, circumstance by circumstance, exactly what a "typical" day for me looks like.  Not that they'll ever see this post or the information contained within, but as a reference for the next time the whispers follow me down the hall.

Day in the Life of an Elementary Technologist
Tuesday, December 11, 2007

7:30 - Arrive to Work Early

7:40 - Get email messages, sort "to-do" list for the day

7:45 - 1st Call of the Day: "My email doesn't work!"  Response: "I'll be right down"

8:00 - Listen to announcements.  Discover staff to be looking for a missing font, it's dire if we don't find it.  We can't teach our kids to write without this font.  We need it!

8:10 - Building translator discovers her out-of-date and not-supported Appleworks doesn't have a Spanish dictionary installed.  Adds it to the list of things to do.

8:15 - Googled D'Nealian font in question and placed appropriate files on thumb-drive

8:20 - Spoke with building principal, next time call me, we can fix it

8:22 - Install fonts on Kindergarten Teacher Laptop, explain how to access them.  Add to list to install for Jen M. ASAP

8:27 - Gets an IM from an upset friend.  Lends an ear while trying to figure out next step.

8:30 - Panicked call from Main Office: "Carissa!  My computer is crashing! Help!  There are little white boxes all over the screen!"

8:35 - Wander down to M.O. and reboot the new iMac.  Login as user.  All is well.  Spend 10 minutes explaining what happened, receive numerous blank stares in response.  End it with: if it happens again, call me, but you'll be fine.

8:42 - Translator calls with Printer error.  Walk her through adding a printer through the GUI.  I'll be heading down there shortly.

8:45 - Librarian drops off substitute teacher panicking about Art Lit at 12:30, needs to understand how to connect laptop to presenter.  Walk her through it.  She might remember the steps in 4 hours.  Don't count on it.

9:00 - Finally back to researching running an F7/8 server on a PC to talk to old iMacs - wait!  Translator calls again.  Back down to actually add her printer by IP address.  I should know better.

9:10 - Install Office Printer and Appleworks 6 Spanish Dictionaries for Translator.  Cross two items off list.

9:12 - Wander back to office.  Turn on all boxes (Fedora 8 Server, Howie OSX server, Windows Box, and Testing Machine).  Will multitask once they boot.  Listen to the "romper room" kids scream.  It's going to be another one of those days.

9:20 - PTA President informs me "Computer lab isn't working!  It's down!  We need to test!  Fix it!"  Enter lab, boot 40 ancient iMacs, explain that it will take a few minutes for everything to come online and netboot.  Patiently wait while GUI loads.  Log students into thin clients and get them started on OAKS.  Quietly take my leave.

9:30 - Switch to the F8 box.  Open port 22, determine free static range, and assign a static IP.  I'll want to remote that later.  Switch to old eMac server, check to see what the hell is taking up 60Gigs of space.  Add reformatting and partitioning to the to-do list.  Start the Windows box on updates.

9:45 - Realize I'm still getting SPAM from Monster.com.  Login to my defunct account and jump through hoops.  Realize that the only option is to call tech support.  Spent the next 15 minutes speaking with Amit Kumar Sethia.  Finally get my account deleted.  Sheesh.

10:20 - Still can't login remotely to my Fedora box.  Idly wonder what the internal firewalls look like.  Turned off SELinux, opened box ports, created tunnels.  The search continues.

10:23 - ESOL classroom shares that one of their clamshells has a dysfunctional touchpad.  Follow the aide to the classroom, check out the classroom.  Mouse is jumpy, unplug, restart.  Seems to be okay.  Adds it to the list to check in on this afternoon.

10:25 - District Tech calls re: Mac Office X.  Was looking for serial, apparently none is required.  Whoops!  Test install it on my laptop.  Good to go.  Off to hunt down the other two users who require the application.

10:50 - Principal calls from the Lab.  Do you have a way to get marker off the dry erase board?  Whiteboard cleaner?  No.  Toxic Solvent?  Some, not really, no.  Head off to find Doug, head day custodian, maybe we can get it re-laquered?  Setup Pages on WS connected to Presenter to act as projected White Board.

11:00 - Get stopped on way through office:  what can we buy to make and laminate badges for next year?  Add it to todo list.  Make note to call back PTA.  Also PTA laptop down for the count.  Agree to setup different iBook. Spent next 1/2 hour setting up said laptop.  Presented it with instructions for rest of PTA to use the old one and this one to be returned to me for later use.

11:45 - I'm tired of mucking with my Fedora box.  Make a note to talk to Scott or Thad, see what they recommend.  It's got to be something simple.  Shelf it until tomorrow.

11:50 - Work out a copy of that CD from District.  Mac never makes copying an ISO easy.

11:57 - Sent original CD back to District.  Thank you!  Debates about going out to lunch.  Probably should wait and see if Art Lit person is able to work the laptop.  Will revisit the topic in half an hour.

12:16 - Found an apple.  I'm still hungry.  Give it another 15 minutes and I can try to run out.  Randomly remember a comment made at the last tech meeting re: Second Life not being blocked at the ESD level.  Goes to find out if it will really run through the school network.  Discovers that the "grid is down".  Remind self to try again later.

12:27 - All is quiet in the OK-Corral.  Hmmm.  Food!

12:30 - Stopped on the way out of building.  "When's your next blog class?"  Tomorrow morning at 8, but you know you can call me any time when you've got a few minutes.  Further chitchat.  10 minutes later I finally get out to the car.

12:45 - Ran into Dustin, again!, at Bento's.  Chatted re: work while waiting for my soba noodles.  Had a great conversation about ports and Fedora and Mac networks and busyness and offered a spare hand if he ever needed it.  All in all, good convo.  Soba Noodles =Yummy.  Brought it back.

12:58 - Stupid train.  Back in building.  Need to look into my F7/8 box again.  

1:09 - Teacher from the pit of all that's evil in the world calls.  Something's wrong with her email.  This be the same teacher who informed me of this as she was walking out the door yesterday not giving me a chance to respond.  So much for lunch, down to fix the computer I go.

1:12 - Walking out of my office phone rings, building Principal wants to know what's wrong with teacher's email.  Spend 2 minutes explaining troubleshooting steps, promise to do research and get it back up.  Oi!

1:29 - Ctrl + Click on Inbox, "Go Online" Problem fixed.  Show teacher what I did, be sure to show her little squiggly line meaning she's disconnected, mention to check that if it's an error again.  Also show her how to check to see if she's connected to an airport.  I know she'll call again.  Am ready to walk out and she has three just "one-more-question"'s.  Okay... "So I'm setting up my email address at home and the tech said it's .net, but should it be .net or .com?"  Who is your provider? "Willamette Broadband."  Checks website, appears to be .com try that.  If not, we can work it out.  "So I can call you at home tonight if it's not working?"  Erms... whatever.  Finally made it out alive.  They do have their own tech support for a reason.

1:30 - Come back to voicemail.  Gym teacher wants help blogging after school.  Sends her an email in response.  Okay, lets set it up for 4pm after school tomorrow.  You're on the calendar.

1:37 - While eyeing food decided to work on my MacBook trying to get a solid inventory of everything in the building as well as troubleshoot my poor Fedora server, half-listen to a friend who is still having a rough day on IM, and maybe eat some noodles while finalizing the research for a solution for making ID badges.

2:11 - Decide to finally tackle the three spare laptops sitting on my desk.  Goal is to build two full images - one student G3/G4 build that's under 8Gigs so it can be used universally and one teacher G4 build that can be used for the remainder of the year.

2:20 - Another call from the lab.  One iMac has a "fuzzy" screen, would I please check it out.  Ran complete calibrations.  Hmm.  10 minutes later and it's still fuzzy.  Switched it out with another in the "sometimes functional but more often than not broken" row and labeled it as possible video failure in future.  All is well.  Testing almost over for the day.  Start to turn off lab computers.

2:50 - Translator stops in to chat.  Surprisingly there's nothing wrong with her computer!  Sweet!  Chat for ten minutes, talk about possibility of snow.  Back to work.

3:05 - Had an interesting conversation about DHCP and *glomps* with Scotty on IM.  Kinda funny.  Finally ended it with "I've spent too many years communicating via IM, I developed my own dialect." & left it there.

3:15 - Hey!  One image down.  Lets start the update process.  Setup the image for the student base.  At least I can get it imaged tonight.

3:20 - Melissa from PTA walks in, glad we were able to get her setup.  Chat briefly about how her time proctoring OAKS went.  Good conversation.  Now back to work.

3:41 - Dosed a paper towel with water and stuck it on top of a laptop with stickers on it.  Why do teachers/people have this fascination with sticking things to their computers?  Or writing on them with permanent ink?  It's a pain to get the stuff off!  Will have to let it sit for a while and then go after it with an exacto knife.

3:58 - Call from the Principal.  She needs 2 MacBooks w/mice setup with the OAKS browser for tomorrow morning at 9:00.  Gah.  Off to find 2 MacBooks off one of my carts and create the users, etc, etc.

4:27 - Dropped off completed computers, left a note about which user to login as and put them in the now dead office.  Cross one item off tomorrows list.

4:30 - Image for student G3/G4 iBooks transferred.  Shut down the laptop with mental note to start updating the image tomorrow morning.

4:32 - Stare forlornly at the list of things that hasn't even been touched yet today.  Do I work unapproved, and thus unpaid overtime more tonight or should I head home?  *sigh*

4:45 - I give up, I've had enough.  Shut down computer and close up shop.  Tomorrow is another day.

Work sometimes frustrates me to no end.  Today was a prime example of one of those days where I just need to find a punching bag for an hour after my extended day.  One of the things that is in my "job description", although that in and of itself is a misnomer being that the thing changes daily, is that that I offer after school and before school "lessons" for teachers on how to properly use their laptops.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Buzz!  Wrong answer.  I had a teacher tell me today that if the instructions on how to do something included more than four sentences, aka a paragraph, it was too much to understand and they wouldn't get it.  Say what?!  C'mon now, that's a lame excuse.  Sure, they're busy teaching our youngsters and what not, but don't tell me that you can't follow step-by-step instructions to use a program that is supposed to help you do your job.  So I go back and look at my walk through.  It's a step-by-step guide on how to save a file in a different format in the Mac version of Open Office.  It's really not that difficult, each step is outlined and then there's a screenshot showing exactly where the menu is and what needs to be clicked, typed, or changed.  I really can't dumb it down any further then that.

So I get to thinking and decide, sure, it's one more thing for my teachers to do and laziness has to be a factor.  And then I sit back and think, well, golly gee whiz.  I know that the last thing they want to do is wear a second hat, but if I can multi task offering support on an OS that I've known only six weeks, the very least they can do is put their students first and learn the software so they can do their job.  It's not like I'm asking them to do anything outside of what the district has mandated they do to keep their jobs, even more so, I'm trying to make it easier for them to do so in as few pain-free steps as possible.

I'm already at whits end.  What else can I do?  I offer to sit down with them one-on-one during their free time before or after school to walk them through it in person, step-by-step.  I offer both online and printed FAQ's on how to do everything from saving a document to migrating data.  I'm available by cell phone, internal extension, mailbox, walk downs, or however else they choose to reach me.  I work the extra hours without pay to make sure they're taken care of, computers are up and running according to schedule, and nothing catastrophic affects their daily routines.  And all this just doesn't seem to matter when the teachers themselves are so apathetic that they don't care to learn or advance in their field, it's so... disappointing and frustrating, and overall, disillusioning to know that it's just going to be this way.  Sometimes, I just don't get end users.