The
Nextel cell phone used for walkie talkie capabilities is an obsolete technology
at the school at which I work. The Nextel cell phone was bolted to every
classroom wall with security screws. They were supposed to be plugged in and
left on throughout the day so that each classroom could communicate with each
other, the therapy rooms, or the front office if needed. Everyone was
instructed to do this by “bleeping” each other, which was a term that meant
pushing a button to activate the walki talkie feature, then punching in the
code of a phone from another room, and then talking through the speaker. The
purpose of the phones was so we could communicate with other rooms without
physically going to those rooms.
There were many reasons this
technology stopped being used. First, the phones were placed too high from the
outlet for the plug to reach it. As a result, every room had to add an
extension cord to use it. In a school for students with special needs and
behavior problems, the cord was always a hazard. Second, in order for the
phones to work, they had to be on. The phones were turned off in some
classrooms because anyone who owned a Nextel phone and had the phone’s number
could bleep it, even if that person was not part of our school building or
staff. That means people who dialed a number incorrectly would bleep the rooms
and some of the rooms had the phone number of a phone that was recently disconnected
so anyone trying to still reach that person continually bleeped. This was
distracting during the day. Third, in order to answer a call, someone had to
hold down the button and respond, the same way a walkie talki works. This means
teachers had to stop teaching in order to communicate with the caller. Fourth,
it was a long process to look up the phone number of the room you wanted to
communicate with, wait for the person to answer, and then communicate though
the walkie talki. Many times people felt it was faster to just walk to the
other classroom, especially considering that our school is not very big. Fifth,
our school is used my other programs, who rent the building, during the evening
and weekends. The students who attended those programs would use tools to pry
the phones off the wall, and steal the memory cards and batteries out of the
back of the phones. Or, they would use it so much, that it had to be reset,
which would mean we would have to pry it off the wall to reset it. Sixth, the
school no longer had enough money in the budget to pay the monthly fee for all
of the phones. The two technologies that are used in replace of the Nextel
phones are two technologies we already had in place: the school intercom and
email. The school intercom only works between the office and the classrooms.
Email can work between anyone with an email address in the school. The only way
for a classroom to communicate with another classroom immediately is by
physically going to that classroom. If there are staff or teachers who are
friends we also call or text each other from our cell phones.
In order for me to want to integrate
a technology into my organization, the technology needs to provide an
opportunity that is not otherwise possible without it. This could mean bringing
a completely new variable into the picture. For example, the students could use
an iPad to simulate a cash register to help students learn to make change for
vocational practice. It could also mean making a difficult task easier. For
example, using an iPad to create a picture collage by cutting and pasting
pictures already saved in the iPad rather than manually cutting them with
scissors and gluing them down.
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