I hate technology!!!!

I swear the technology God's are against me this semester. Between issues at school and home I am so disconnected right now. I know this post is late but I need to just get this  posted to get it out of my head. We have lived here almost 3 years and have never had issues with internet it wasn't always the fastest but it was enough to get school work done, surf a bit and maybe stream a movie once in a while. We had an outage of our entire area the beginning of the semester and since then we have had slower than dial up speed. Come to find out when the internet came back on we were re prioritized and lost our high speed internet slot. The way internet works in some villages here in Germany is there are only a few high speed slots available and you have to wait for one depending on where your house is. We were lucky enough to get the slot of the people who lived in teh house before us so it was no big deal until now. So this was doable with computers at our library, until they reduced the amount of time you can be on a computer because so many people are now using them. So I was reduced to one hour at a time of computer use. Unless there was no one waiting them I could go over. Crazy I know but its my life.

Fast forward a few days and my school computers started acting up. It wasn't the computer but my ID card that we need to log onto the computer at school. Apparently my chip got a scratch on it and I had to go get a new card. it was either wait 4 weeks for an appointment or take an entire day and sit and wait. I opted for the sit and wait. So after watching Cars 2 twice and reading almost entire novel they issued me a new card and I could now log onto the computers at school.

I am ready for a break from technology!!! It can be so wonderful allowing me to see and communicate with family half a world away but when it goes wrong it can go so wrong!!!

Assistive technology .... make it work!

A few things have happened to me this week that have really brought this topic home. First of all I was offered to hire on as the paraeducator that I have been substituting for since the beginning of the school year. I work with a few students that would benefit from assistive technology but are not getting it for a variety of reasons. The cases that bother me the most are the parents that are fighting the use of it.  I do not know first hand the situations that facilitated these decisions but I hate to see a lack of knowledge stand in the way of a student's education. Personally I have been pushing for my son to be able to use a computer for notes and assignments for 3 years now. Finally this week he will be assigned a laptop to take with him from class to class. Unfortunately, he got sick and was not able to begin with it. I am curious to see if it is a bigger distraction or a help for him. If things are set up properly from the beginning I feel this could be a great help to him. He is currently struggling in his health elective because his notes are poor and by the time he gets home he forgets what they were suppose to be about. The teacher just let it go because "he's special ed and I thought a C was ok for him". I was completely shocked by this response. I understand that students need to earn their grades but not allowing a student to have that opportunity to do so and not even consider that a student could do better was a slap in the face. After I calmed down and explained the situation to her she had a different opinion. My son will be given his note packet on computer and be able to fill in the blanks legibly. I think sometimes as teachers we have to remember that all students need to be allowed to achieve at their level and we need to learn what that level is. Some students are just not going to be A students. They do not have the drive or the interested or maybe even the ability to achieve at a high level in certain subjects. However, if a student is interested in a class and participates and can show demonstration of knowledge in another format we need to look at that. Just because they cannot put a pencil onto paper and write out an answer does not mean that they deserve a lower grade - unless as my teenager just pointed out to me its a penmanship class. This was an interesting article from University of North Florida about preparing regular education teachers for an inclusion classroom Inclusion