Schools wired but no Internet

[Hawk]

Virtually all public schools in the United States have access to the Internet, but few are taking full advantage of the technology to instruct students, according to a new government report. Article here. (http://news.com.com/Report+Schools+wired,+but+still+not+Internet+savvy/2100-1028_3-5517609.html)

[michael]

I can only imagine the stuggle to keep all those laptops running if every student had one. I used to do desktop support for a school district. I spent more time removing programs that didn't belong than actually fixing computer problems. And as the article states, a good majority of the time the students know more about comuters than the teachers do.

My favorite thing that ever happened was the librarian that told me her hard drive was making a strange noise, which it wasn't it was the mouse, and that the computer was about to crash. Well, she did have about 10 differenent virus because she somehow managed to turn off the virus software. I was back at the same school a few days later and she told me that her husband said that I had no business fixing computers. Though strangly enough her hard drive never crashed. The biggest problem was that everyone used Hotmail, and would download their virii from there. IF the bone heads running the network had any brains they would have banned Hotmail....

[Ryan]

I feel your pain Michael. I do tech support for a school district in my area (primarily because they are willing to work with my school schedule). When we switch to Active Directory and Exchange I will suggest that we filter all attachments. We will also be getting more control over the servers hopefully. They have to use our e-mail, however, since we block all other sites with webmail and have a very strict proxy. Adware is also the bane of my existence. I waste so much time fixing computers chocked full of adware for friends and teachers.

I agree with the articles assertion concerning the poor use of technology. Last summer we put in brand new computers with a gig of ram in many of the math rooms. My guess is they will only be turned on a few times before they are relegated to the junk pile. Do the kindergarten classes need top of the line computers to play kiddy games (which were overpriced and I could have made in Macromedia Director)? Heck no. Why do they have them and not the tech rooms? Politics. If one school or area does not get an equal amount of computers as the other then there will be hell to pay.