Blah Blah Blah

At the moment our school is trialling online roll marking. Eventually, both the rolls and a lot of our teaching content will be available to us online - including other teacher's resources and ideas - a great way to teach and learn and collaborate. Being the technobrat that I am, I think the idea is great - the online roll marking (which is the only bit that is really up at the moment) is an easy program to use, takes the same amount of time as manually marking the roll in your chronicle and has the added benefit of making the roll monitors that used to travel from class to class checking attendence defunct. This means that your classes are no longer interrupted by a student who requires you to stop teaching and tell them who is absent. In all a great idea that actually saves us time already.
Unfortunately there are some (the vocal minority) who are unable to look past the fact that they have to take their laptop to class and that they have to log into the program which requires them entering their password three times and that the wireless network lets us down in some classrooms. I am constantly hearing people whingeing and complaining about such minor things. The general state of negativity to anything new in this school both depresses and aggravates me. I know that this school is no different from any other in terms of attitudes - in fact it is probably more progressive than many with a large cohort of graduate teachers who are embracing the changes as making their jobs more simple. However I still cannot escape the negativity that started with the mere suggestion of these changes last year and has continued throughout the training and particularly this week. Why do people get scared by the idea of change? Is it because they do not understand the process behind the system? Is it because they are stuck in their ways and fail to see the benefits of the new way of doing things? Is it because they have nothing better in their lives to focus their attention to? Nothing better to talk about and so they are using it as a conversation starter? It annoys me that technology is always the first thing to get a bashing from the uneducated and unconverted. It's the old adage of knocking what you don't understand I guess.
Needless to say - I haven't had any problems with the new system. It does not bother me that I have to type my password in three times to get into the system because I can type fast and it takes me about 8 seconds. I do not complain about having to take my laptop to class because I take it will me everywhere anyway (you never know when google or dictionary.com may com in handy in the English and History classroom). I do not feel the need to use this new system as a starting point for conversation because I have a life and plenty of other things to talk about that are far more important and worthy of my time (was that a bit harsh)?
So what am I doing about this? I am helping those who may have problems or concerns by showing them how to use the program effectively and by talking them through and explaining the technical difficulties that they may be having. The two staff members supporting the new system are doing a brilliant job - and working a lot harder than they should have to to ensure that there are minimal issues and that staff have the support they need. There is a new computer tech to join the other two in helping to sort out any of those issues and allow students. Largely though people are not actually having difficulties - over 90% of the rolls were marked for the very first day of the trial without an issue which I think is a brilliant achievement. Largely people just want to complain - any excuse will do. My technobrat solution - to put my new 60Gb Photo/Video I-pod in my ears on full volume and ignore them. It's the only way a girl can get any work done these days...