Attitudes of staff towards ICT

[Dos_Box]

This is not intended to be a rant, or a grumble, just a serious look as to why some staff find it so hard to get to grips with issues such as logging on (after 6 months you would have thought that they have mastered it by now) and how to use computers in a classroom enviroment.

Many staff are very competant and plan their lessons meticulously and use all of the available resources making life easiy for themselves. Then there are the others. The 'My computer at home dosn't do this' branch of teachers. The ones that will call you out every day without fail to sort out some perceived problem or other. The ones who does not know there are different versions of Windows and Office. Where do they come from and why are they having such difficulty in doing something that so many others (including the pupils) find so easy?

 

P.S. This is an actual conversation I had in a packed classroom several years ago with a not very knowleagable (at the time ICT teacher).

 

Teacher. Why do these compouters keep crashing all the time?

 

Me. Because they are running Windows 98 and Office 2000 with just 32MB of RAM.

 

Teacher. But why?

 

Me.

 

Teacher. But why would Microsoft sell a faulty product?

 

Me. Because people were willing to buy it and it was the best technology available at the time.

 

Teacher. Have you spoken to Microsoft to get them to fix this?

 

Me. They aren't going to.

 

Teacher This is unacceptable! And anyway. This doesn't happen on my computer at home!

 

I gave up talkng after that. It appears that some kind of mantal barrier had been reached and reason was not going to be able to breach it.

[tarquel]

Good start to the thread DB.

 

As we dont live very long as humans, I wont post on this just yet ;)

 

The ones who does not know there are different versions of Windows and Office.

 

Hell... there is plenty of people that think Office is a part of windows i.e. you get office with XP lol

 

Its a slight digression but we see that a lot in the shop i help out.

 

Probably coz they might be teachers who are used to it being on the machines at work and just dont know the difference. (or parents of kids and the parents dont realise what the child is talking about properly)

 

I said to the owner - "we really should put a sign up saying "Office (Word, Excel, etc... isn't part of Windows - Its a seperate product which you must buy" lol

 

sorry - digression over

 

Nath

[StuartC]

you'll love this, we get it all the time here.

 

customer: "my interactive whiteboard isnt working"

 

me: "in what way?"

 

customer: "there is no image on it"

 

me: "oh, you mean the projector isnt working?"

 

customer: "no it's the board, theres just nothing there!"

 

me: "ok"

 

me: *proceeds with instructions to fix a projector*

 

btw, these comments in no way reflect any opinion or views of the company i work for. we also tend to find that these are primary school teachers and never IT technicians.