1) It is quite clear that there was no planning or review of technology & software needs by any district administrators prior to their decision to shackle teachers and students with this restrictive and counter-productive ‘technology.’

2) Policy is implemented without any regard whatsoever to what is needed for instruction. Decisions on curriculum and instructional practice are made by persons (Kingswood) with no qualification to do so.

3) Nothing works like we were promised it would. The necessary resources have not been allocated to this project. We need enough software engineers to adequately address the curricular interactions with the streaming agent. We need a more sophisticated filtering software. How about one that allows teachers to do their job? We need adequate bandwidth to stream whatever we need to teach our classes.

4) The blanket blocking of all possible instructional collaboration websites exhibits a paranoia that clearly shows that we are not a 21st century district. Nearly all web2.0 resources are blocked. All social networking resources are blocked (unless you’re a student who doesn’t want to comply with the inane policies promulgated by Kingswood). Even numerous Columbus Dispatch articles are blocked – and Kingswood has adamantly refused to unblock them.

5) Is there anything good about our current technology? Not really. The only way to actually be a 21st century teacher in Columbus City Schools is to use your own resources because district resources simply do not work. That’s pretty sad; especially since Kingswood is touting itself as trying to be what other Ohio urban districts should strive toward. I think not. Education in Ohio will be in the toilet if CCS technology becomes the standard in Ohio.

Okay, do I sound like I’m frustrated with Kingswood and CCS technology? Well, I am, and I think I have enough experience that my opinion is valid. I’m at East HS and we were the ‘pilot’ for this ThinClient disaster. I’ve been working with computers since the 1970′s and I have never seen such a grand-scale fiasco in my life.

Dr. Harris mentioned that ‘her computer works’ but then, she isn’t a teacher trying to engage students in her classroom. I am.

1. Computer drops in classrooms in my building were determined by teachers who are now probably ten years into retirement. Why can’t these be moved to better accomodate today’s teachers? Seriously – the drop in my corner forces me to use a twenty-five foot cord to connect to my Smartboard – and I must run it through all the seats in my classroom. Nothing is more amusing than when little Johny stands up to sharpen his pencil and accidentally pulls the cord out of the wall….gotta love it.

2. 21st Century Learning Skills??? Not in this district – no way, never. Since when has the word “blog” been added to the dreaded four letter word list? It’s reasonable and sensible to block out potential porn sites, but when you’re finding websites in the curriculum guide are now blocked, there’s a problem. Where is the common sense? The poorest students in my school are also the ones who are the farthest from the public library. How long will the district continue to deny equal access to technology to these students? Our “Mission Statement” for the district says, “Each student is highly educated, prepared for leadership and service, and empowered for success as a citizen in a global community.” – but NOT in the area of technology….

3. Our building was really excited a year or so when we got an upgrade to the computers in our computer lab. Thank God Africentric got new computers so we could upgrade with their discards. Equity? I don’t thinks so…
New buildings have LCD projectors mounted to the ceiling in every room, yet at my building the administration has to budget for this equipment out of their principal’s funds. I’m sure the district was quick to give my building extra funds to make up for the lack of technology in my building – clearly it would be unreasonable and unfair for the budgets at new buildings to be the same as budgets at older ones – older buildings are so far behind in technology acquisition when compared to what is standard in new buildings, it will take years to catch up. Don’t believe me? We’re practically having fist fights over the ONE DVD player in our building. Flat screens TV mounted to the wall? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Maybe by the time the current kindergarten students graduate….from college.

4. I got out the laptop cart this year when I returned to school. It’s always fun to take bets at the beginning of the year to see how many laptops cooked and fried in the intense heat of the building during the summer months. Technology does more poorly in the heat than an ice cream cone. Why are we not air conditioning ALL buildings?

5. Thin Clients are the biggest joke ever. They’re beyond slow and they don’t accomodate CD’s (Wasn’t it nice of the district to purchase all those nice CD’s with our textbook adoptions last year?) I’ll never use my one lone computer with my first period students because it takes half the period to warm it up and get it loaded. It’s so cute and amusing the way I get to load Microsoft Word EVERY SINGLE TIME I WANT TO USE IT! And, while having the option to print in every room in the building is fun (the kids LOVE this)why can’t my default printer be the one in my room? Seriously, does Gene Harris have to select her printer EVERY SINGE TIME SHE WANTS TO PRINT? Good times, people….good times…

6. District email. Seriously, I’d rather stab myself in the head multiple times with a rusty screwdriver rather than check district email. From the random string of numbers assigned to my name in my email, to the random password created by the district for me to use, to the multiple steps one has to go through just to access email, to the shrouded mystery of how to delete unwanted emails, this system is just bad, bad, bad. And, by golly, I’m so sick of those OVERQUOTA messages I could scream.

From policies to purchasing, Columbus City Schools has embarrassed itself. Let’s pray the taxpayers don’t catch on to what a joke all this is…

I. Leadership- Communication (There isn’t any!!!!)
1. No input was sought by the district with regards to the procurement of equipment; the district did not seek input from educators about their needs.
There is no oversight on what is being purchased for our benefit. There should be some threshold amount of money i.e. $500,000 where the union convenes a joint committee of one member from each effected staff to make sure that our interests are being represented.
2. The district mislead educators as to the “popularity” of the thin clients.
I asked in a meeting at my school where else this thin client technology was being used and a district representative told me South Western City Schools and another district in Cincinnati were using it, implying it was widespread, or popular. Though in comparison, the Columbus Metropolitan Libraries have a wide assortment of users, and they have a hard drive with software that installs very reliably and meets users’ needs. Also, when touring 3 major college campuses with my child, I found that they aren’t using this same thin client technology. It is misleading to promote a product as the best, popular choice when it is clearly still an experimental technology. This shows a lack of foresight on the part of the district, which did not have sufficient evidence that large scale implementation, would be successful. So to the extent that it is possible to cancel this contract with the thin client vendor I think we should cancel it and get our money back to buy something different.

II. Thin Clients-
1. Speed- Thin client creates obstacles to learning because of their special issues that complicate access to educational content and work productivity software.
Thin clients can vary from 4 minutes up to 30 minutes to boot up computers and open needed software programs. Overall, the speed issues with the thin client result in lost productivity for staff and lost educational opportunities for Students.
A. Thin Clients do not load programs efficiently.
2. Won’t log out-
Thereby forcing a reboot of the computer and you lose all the software that was installed. We had a Spanish teacher come to the computer lab to use the online textbook for all 5 of his classes. Java wasn‘t installed so we had to install it. Fine ok (that took 10 minutes to do after the 8 minutes to login), but when the class ended some of the computer froze up. So then we had to reboot those computers when the next class came into the lab. So we had to do it all over again. When you lose the first 10 minutes of class instruction, there will be great difficulty in getting the students back on task and salvaging the classroom instruction.
3. The Thin Client computers are not multimedia friendly.
Firstly, we had a student who wanted to make a movie about a concept that he had learned. There aren’t any Firewire ports in the thin clients to load the video clips to manipulate them. Secondly, we finally got the video over to the thin client, but the colors were all washed out; the figures on the screen were mostly green. I also saw this once on a UnitedStreaming clip that a teacher wanted to use. Lastly, the computer needs a hard drive. Clip Art and other pieces of software are designed to run off hard drives and we desperately need the ability to use the computer even if the network is down.
4. The thin client is starting to dictate instruction by limiting the choices of instructional materials due to lack of CD drives.
There was discussion that a couple of textbook adoptions were decided in part on the issue of CD support resources. Since the thin client can’t support the supplemental CD-ROM resources it became a factor in choosing an alternate textbook for adoption.
5. Lost Files-
I have had a few students and 1 staff member report that work in their “My Documents” folder was missing. The Help Desk cannot figure this one out.
6. Mice problems –
At times the mouse suddenly doesn’t work and a reboot is necessary.
7. No RAM —
The heart of what we’d like a computer to do is to multitask and the thin client can’t do this very well. We were also told that when the RAM gets all used up by the applications the computer will get sluggish and will have to be rebooted. It is hard to believe that we knowingly purchased this as a standard platform knowing it has this limitation.

IV. Physical Access- Lack of access (Teacher’s need access at their desks and in the center of their classrooms)
1. Physical Location in the classroom.
A useful computer and projector are the new minimum standard for a classroom instruction. Where is my union on this issue. We have the right in the contract to have our own desk and file cabinet. So now we need to update that to include a computer, (with a CD Drive, and hard drive) on the desk and another one in the center of the room with a projector to present lessons. Ideally this would be a SMARTBOARD, especially with the district focus on “Race to the Top” and use of 21st century skills and use of multimedia. 2. Personal Computers not supported.
Lastly, it should be ok for teachers to use their own laptop computers on the district network. I fail to understand all the possible harm that might occur if this were allowed. Universities allow their students to use their wireless network and have sufficient safeguards in place such that their networks are not harmed!!

V. Filter- Websense- (No review/appeal process)
1. No review/appeal process-
At the technology conference I attended in January, there was a wonderful presentation by Ohio Dominican College with all kinds of websites that would enhance instruction. All of the sites were blocked by Websense. When I generated a Help Desk request, the Help Desk pointed out that the sites allowed students to upload files and comment on them and therefore was being denied. I offered the following solution: I stated that the site has the ability for a teacher to make his class private. That way the general public cannot see it, and an individual class could be created with just those students only the teacher being able to see the site; all to no avail. When I discussed this with a downtown administrator, I was told that I should be careful what I was asking for because he believed that some teachers could possible be in jeopardy of losing their jobs if we opened up the internet. Why are the needs of responsible teachers not being supported?
2. Losing district competitiveness & lack of support for 21st Century skills
- History Day is a competition at the high school level for students to develop and design research projects and to present them at an annual competition.
I attended a conference on 21st Century skills. I was all excited about Glogster, a website that allows students to create online electronic posters. They are using this website in a middle school at Columbus Academy, private school and I wanted our high school students to use it instead of making a paper poster boards. Again this is not allowed. Our students likewise cannot compete in some categories because of these restrictions.

VI. TAM
I have watched numerous teachers struggle with logging into the TAM system. The district reduced the position of our attendance secretary and I guess they are counting on the teachers to make sure that the attendance is accurate through the TAM system. I am wondering how we will do since the software is taking so long to load with some teachers waiting 30 minutes to get into the TAM system.
As the PAM coordinator for my building it has been extremely cumbersome to support for parents at the building level. I have to match siblings in my building so that a parent can see both of their child’s grades. While we are at it– Why don’t we end the sending of interim reports to parents saving the district thousands of dollars in postage? If they have unlimited access to an electronic gradebook then why are interim reports necessary?

VII. School Websites –
The one size fits all approach to website development is yet another step backwards in the marketing of the individual strengths of our respective schools. Once again there wasn’t any advanced notification that our websites were all being taken down. The current format lacks the multimedia aspects that make it attractive to the public. Can anyone name another district that uses a black and white format for all their webpages? Student work cannot be displayed and 21st century learning projects do not lend themselves to the current webpage format.

VIII. Systemic refresh of technology-
How can it be that the district administration ran out of money to purchase thin clients for all the schools? The levy was passed to specifically supply money for new computers. It has been said that a thin client only costs like $350 each. Even a high school with 280 computers would only cost $98,000 to equip with thin clients. So where did all the money from the levy go? A plan needs to be developed to refresh hardware after 10 years and software every 5-7 years. Textbooks have a plan for replacement, school buses do too, but technology somehow isn’t part of this formula.