A busy couple weeks

Hello, all
A lot has happened since my last post. When last I wrote, I was concerned with updating and enhancing my wikispaces and blogs with more features. Well, as it turned out my concerns were for naught. As it happens, Tucson Unified School District has in its infinite wisdom decided to block all social and personal networking sites indefinitely. The official reason for this is that such sites take up a lot of space on the servers for one and use a lot of bandwidth. Remember, TUSD is using 10 year old equipment and the network is probably even older. Thus, it cannot handle the demands placed on it by modern, 21st century technology. Added to this is the anticipated pre-registration for the 2010-2011 school year which will be a first for the District. This first time effort will likely be filled with all manner of glitches. Bandwidth problems are one thing the District does not want to worry about.
So, where does that leave us? Dead in the water as far as wikis and paperless projects are concerned. Fortunately, they can be copied and pasted over to Word documents but this is just so ridiculous as to be beyond description. How, I wonder, are we supposed to be doing and learning for the 21st century without the tools? How are we supposed to learn and do teamwork and collaboration without networking sites? How are we supposed to learn and demonstrate innovation and creativity on the 2.0 Web without Web 2.0 tools? It just boggles my mind. And I am told that Tucson High Magnet School is the most advanced in technology in the district. What does that say about the prospects for the rest of TUSD?
One frontier I intend to pursue is to publish this blog and its sister on the web for all to see. In it I will comment on the continuing struggle to use and learn with 2.0 stuff at my school and the District. I will also continue to describe my journey in the new world of 21st century learning and the 2.0 web. So as I like to say, stay tuned.

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Is there hope?

One thing I have been greatly concerned about as we embark on this journey into 21st century learning is the access to computers. While they are not the end themselves, they are an indispensable tool for the process. I have expressed my reservations (and frustration) over the fact that there is only one Mobile PC cart available for checkout and only two labs. This is for a student body of 3,000 and nearly 200 teachers. How are we going to do the research for our projects if we have to wait in line for a lab? Projects would be stretched out by weeks. Flow would be disrupted.
Well, there seems to be a break in the clouds. It would seem the school has more than one PC cart. Details are sketchy but there may be as many as 3 or 4 stashed away. They lack being configured and the tech to do it. I am told it would take a tech a day (w/ overtime) to get one up and running. It would not be ours to use exclusively (that would be too much to hope for) but it would be an additional mobile lab to use. So stay tuned and I may have very good news in the near future.
In the meantime, our Correspondence Project will likely be stretched out. The milepost due on Friday 6 November will likely be extended into the following week. And it is very likely this project will be our 2nd quarter's sole project. I did not plan it that way, folks. I had hoped to get two projects in for this quarter. But, it will just not be possible, not with the shortage of computers, the increased demand for them, the holidays and the stretching out of the existing project.
In any case, we will continue to plug away, we will survive and thrive.