The Technology Culture of the CITC Program at Bartlett High School

I interact relatively rarely with the Bartlett High School staff and students who are not in our program, so I am going to discuss the details of the technology culture of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Inc. (CITC) group at Bartlett, which consists of 9 staff members and roughly 180 students.

Limitations: Our greatest challenge stems from the fact that we estimate that only around 25% of our students have computers with internet access at home. This means that a majority of our students are at a relative technology disadvantage. This became very apparent when I did a unit on doing calculations using Excel in the Algebra II class. The unit took much longer than I had planned for, primarily because many of the students did not have the general computer technology competencies that I had assumed when planning. On the other end of the spectrum were students who found the material relatively straightforward; luckily, we were able to use these students as mentors for the others, as otherwise the unit would have used way more class time than planned. This inequality in access and familiarity with technology means that we cannot reasonably ask students to do homework that requires the use of the internet. The problem with this is that there is a limited amount of class time, and there can only be so much of it allotted for doing internet research and typing assignments. The CITC program is also limited by the level of technological competence of our staff; all but one of our teachers (two if you count me) have already retired from a public school district, and so many of them don’t have the same level of familiarity with newer technology as people who grew up in the digital age tend to have. Finally, our entire staff is limited by the fact that the tech staff at Bartlett is made up entirely of one man: Don Bladow. If any of our equipment or software has an issue, it is up to him to fix it. Even problems that we collectively have the knowledge to fix require his help as we do not have the administrator access and privileges that are needed.

Opportunities: The CITC program has several unique opportunities. First of all, we have our own computer lab with 15 Macintosh computers. Of course, all 15 of them are never working properly at the same time, but nevertheless, it is extremely useful in helping to minimize the technology gap that our students face. CITC is also blessed in having some additional equipment, and potentially some small amount of additional funding to purchase more. Thus our staff has a fairly wide range of possibilities that come with slightly more resources; however, without the knowledge, training, and initiative required to integrate more technology into the classroom, these resources may be underutilized. The MEDIAK program is also an amazing opportunity both for our students, and potentially for our staff if we could collaborate on projects.

Narrowing the Technology Gap: I think that it is imperative that we make a concerted effort to help our students overcome their limited access to technology so that they can be competitive in our Digital World. I think the following steps are required to achieve this:

• Tech Training: Our teachers need to improve their tech skills so that they will be able to incorporate more technology into the classroom. CITC and/or ASD should require and fund more training that is relevant to their subject area.
• Collaboration with MEDIAK: There is a wealth of knowledge and resources available through MEDIAK—we at Bartlett need to find a way to bring them to our classrooms so that we can take advantage of this opportunity. We should also be able to do a better job of convincing students to sign up for the program.
• Personal Projects: As I have the freedom to develop lessons and projects to be implemented in any of our classrooms, and am relatively more technologically savvy than most of our staff, I need to make an effort to ensure that students in each of our classrooms are exposed to useful technology and are taught the skills that will be essential for them to stay competitive in modern workplaces.
• The End of Bartlett Monotheism: Bartlett absolutely needs to hire more tech support staff. Don Bladow is extremely knowledgeable and hard-working, but cannot adequately meet the needs of more than 100 people.
  

For a more detailed description of the technology culture of the CITC program and of Bartlett High School in general, please look at my complete anthropological assessment here