The Texas Education agency has decided, in it's infinite wisdom to survey all teachers on their use and opinions of Technology. Good enough idea, but then they made it way more complicated than it ought to have been, mainly I think to provide "busy work" for some over paid and under worked administrators.
First, all classroom teachers had to give up one of their planning periods. Those of us not on block planning had to carve out some time out of an already to full day. I joined the third grade. 5 teachers + 1 librarian at about $50 an hour = $300 worth of tax dollars.
The Instructional technology department sent not one but 2 trainers to train us. 2 trainers, 1 hour + 1 hour travel time = $200 tax dollars.
We were given 3 photocopies. We then watched an on line video of a talking educational head who read us the photocopies. The head was an administrative head so it was most likely paid double what we are. 1 talking head x 2 hours to make the film = $200
Then we were allowed to access the web site so we could begin to fill out the survey. Price to create survey? Who knows? At least $1000 worth of staff time.
This training was repeated 6 times at my school alone, multiply that by the 40 schools in my district! The amount of money spent to achieve this end is obscene.
Hey, I've got a college degree, I sell on E-Bay, I order on-line, I've taken long distance learning, I keep a blog. I am very capable of filing out an online survey without 30 minutes of prior instruction.
The final indignity? We were handed a pencil and a printed copy of the survey. We were told to fill out the hard copy first and then transfer the information to the on-line version!
Where's my resume?????
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