This is my fifth consecutive year as an elementary school teacher. The first two years I taught in central Florida in a very large county. Every classroom in our school was equipped with a SmartBoard, projector, document camera, and at least four student computers. In addition, each teacher was given their own laptop. These laptops could be used at school, at professional development meetings and at home or anywhere it was needed. Our school also had a student response system that we could check out and use.
Currently I am teaching at a school in a smaller county in Virginia. Each classroom still has a SmartBoard and projector, but I have only seen one document camera in the entire school, and one student response system. In addition to our student computer lab, we have a class set of laptops for student use in the classrooms, an iPod cart with learning applications, and a couple of iPads that the teachers can check out and use at school.
Comparing these two schools it would appear that on one level there may be a barrier related to funding. I also believe that another barrier may be the willingness of some teachers to learn the technologies. Teachers sometimes feel as though they have so much to do already with the demand of testing and paperwork so finding the time to learn something new that is not required gets put on the back burner.
I do not believe that there is always just one barrier. Sometimes the funding is there but not the participation.
