BYTES 101

I am currently sitting in a bytes session. McKinnon Melodrama with the BYTES B group to be precise. Most of the groups seem to be working with the exception of a few annoying students who cannot seem to participate with the rest of the class. I am reflecting on this BYTES organisation and a large component of this job of mine is people management. Having a team of people who are all dealing with less than ideal situations and circumstances, working with people whose methods they may not agree with and working on topics they did not necessarily design is very interesting and at times quite difficult to manage. There are issues with people not being given enough information about what they are supposed to be doing with their groups and people who want to strangle others for their perceived inability to organise their way out of a paper bag.
Perhaps the biggest issue at this stage though is the lack of access to technology and to appropriate workspaces. At the moment students are completing both a compulsory BYTE - 9UP and an elective BYTE. Because it is a rotating timetable the students have 4 periods one week and 2 the next on their elective, and then the opposite on their compulsory BYTE. At the moment, the timetabling has BYTEs in the library, in 2 of the computer rooms in the school and T8, a small technology room with only 10 computers in it. When the 9up groups are in the city, this is not a problem because there are 75 students off the campus. However when 9up decides not to go into the city but to work at school, those 75 students invade the library and other BYTES classes are shunted into other areas. My Bytes classes for the last 2 weeks have been forced to run in the small room t8, which is too small for 20-25 students and also does not have the required access to technology. At the moment the students are actually getting behind in their tasks because of the lack of access to technology. One of the points of this program was to experience 'ubiquitous ICT.' The only thing that we are currently experiencing is invisible ICT. At the moment they are buying another class set of laptops in order to try and ease the pressure on technology, but in the meantime, and even when these laptops arrive, there are still going to be issues with not having enough. Ideally and realistically we actually need access to enough computers for every student in the year level, which is at least 200. I dont know what the options are for this and whether there is the funding to allow so much ICT.
It is raising interesting issues for the planning of the The MERC (McKinnon Education Research Centre?)which is being designed at the moment but will not be ready until next year. In some ways it is difficult running this program without the specifically designed centre with necessary resources, but in the other respect it is important that we are able to look at how the program is currently running, and make changes to the design or technology of the Merc in accordance with what we are discovering that we need. We are learning a lot at this point in time about the organisation, staffing and technology that we require to make this program run smoothly. Hopefully by second semester or next year at the latest we will have ironed out some of the issues that we are currently experiencing and will start to feel that the program is running smoothly and that people are happy in their roles. In the meantime is that another grey hair?