Overcoming Obstacles”Trash to Treasures: Creating Your Own Computer Lab”

Brandi Caldwell
Pinson, Alabama, USA
Blog: http://mtnbrookseniors.blogspot.com/

Presentation Title
“Trash to Treasures: Creating Your Own Computer Lab”

Bio
Having been a classroom teacher for ten years, Brandi has watched the evolution of technology in her classroom. She is a National Board Certified teacher who has taught in rural schools with no equipment, middle class schools with very little accessibility, and her current assignment is in a resource rich school system . Each kind of school has its own set of obstacles to overcome. Brandi feels that if you are going to be a pioneer, you have to expect to journey through some storms and mud along the way. This year she had the priviledge of being selected by the Alabama Best Practice Center as a 21st Century Fellow. Through this work Brandi has had opportunities to meet, network, and educate with teachers across the state and globally through presentations and online workshops. Not only is she an avid blogger, but Brandi is a soon to be second time mom, a coach’s wife, senior English teacher, and self proclaimed domestic goddess!

Description
At her previous last school, Brandi experienced the ‘loss’ of their one and only computer lab. This presentation (done in powerpoint along with a handout full of links changed to a wiki) was done at Alabama Educators Technology Conference two years ago. Brandi called it Trash to Treasures: Creating your own Computer Lab from Scratch. This is her story of the journey from a one computer classroom to a class of 20 computers completely networked. She relates her own obstacles with money and equipment as well as dealing with the IT folks at the district level. It includes links to sites that provide grants and computer recycling/donation sites.

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/technology.mov

Errata: The link to the wiki is http://labforfree.wikispaces.com/