Today I chose to write about something that isn't exactly a type of educational technology to use in the classroom. I've been curious since this class started about funding. Technology is expensive! I wanted to know where schools get money for things like laptops for all their students, graphing calculators, etc. The first site I came across is from last summer:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=6442
It hints that the government might be cutting the funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. This is the main source of ed tech monies for schools. Given that it's an old article, I then did a search for "EETT program cuts." Here's what I found:
http://www.edtechactionnetwork.org/pdf/eett_link.pdf
The government didn't just cut the funding for technology, they completely got rid of it! DOE asked for over $272 billion, and the House decided they deserve NONE of that money. I couldn't believe it.
"This move is particularly interesting because the Administration has continued to justify its EETT cuts by stating that schools could make use of Title IIA funding, which the House bill would now cut. " (from the website.)
The EETT program has been a great source of funding in the past. How are we teachers supposed to increase the use of technology in our classes (as the government recognizes is important and should be done) when we have no funding?!
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by all this, however. It is pretty typical for the system to ask us to do certain things without providing the means for us. Guess that's just part of being a teacher.
So now the question is, what next? Where are teachers to turn for their funding now that their greatest source is gone? Have any of you, group members, had experience with this yet?
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Funding decreases seem to be something that we'll have to deal with. I understand too that some expenditures have been poorly thought out and personally know that there are those out there that spend every cent they can, "because I can". It would appear that some teachers aren't too concerned about how they spend the money in the budget. Many purchases sit and take up space in a closet because they weren't thought through.
Still other purchases are far more expensive through approved school suppliers than they would be in the open market. My science department just picked up a couple of DVD players for around 30 bucks each. In the ScienceKit catalog they were 129 each!
That brings me to the eRating mentioned in the article. The idea of purchasing large volumes at a discount sounds pretty good. Schools band together to get good deals, but then the schools are bound to the agreement and have to pay the prices that are set. Seems like a good place for someone in power to get kick-backs.
I guess the only thing to do is to keep learning what can be done and adapting it to what we have the equipment to do. Hopefully much of what we are learning now won't be too out of date when we get the equipment we need to use what we've learned :)
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