"You want to talk about technology in schools?"

Tomorrow we have an early release so that the staff can break into teams discussing different issues at our school. Conceptually, the meetings are a good idea (though maybe they should occur on inservice days rather than cut into teaching time). I remain to be convinced of how useful they are.

I joined the technology team in hopes of finding a way to exploit the system to benefit my classroom. That hasn't happened. We spent the first half of the year discussing what our research question would be. I think we settled on something broad enough to include anything and not really spur us to any action.

I was talking to my housemate about how I'd like to bring in ideas from the blogosphere (or maybe just mention the presence of the blogosphere) to the meeting. An hour later, she complained that she doesn't know if the school secretary has an e-mail that gets checked. I happen to have the address in my book. It's a yahoo address. Mine's g-mail. We don't have school addresses. It sparks the comment, "You want to talk about technology in our school? Talk about getting everyone communicating by e-mail."

It's simple enough, really. I have the impression that at one point we were all going to be given school e-mail accounts. But I haven't tried opening Outlook on my school computer this year. My housemate tried hers.... once. No one knows other people's personal e-mails. There's no formula to figure them out.

Communication can be a struggle at our school no matter what the form. All the papers in my box just get shuffled around and lost. Conversations constantly need to be written up in memos in order to be documented. I know I'm more comfortable with technology than others, but could we join the e-mail movement to help our organizational skills? To save on printing? To make everything searchable? Please?

P.S. I know I didn't post for my resolution last week. I have some entries that need editing. I need to go through so I can have a better outlook for my own sake.