How would you address this situation? Our school distributes laptops to staff, but they are bulky very SLOW Dell laptops, I couldn't get it to connect to the wifi and stay connected. I have my personal one that I have always used at school. Let's face it, who has ever had a fantastic laptop/computer from their district? I have a student who was very out of control and violent towards others and things. I keep finding more damage on my laptop from this student. I had a very serious talk with them and their parents - it stopped. The student threw my laptop at least 3-4 times because I was using it to project a lesson. They didn't want to participate, so student thought throwing my laptop would solve the problem. However, I didn't spot the damage right away. I told admin and they asked me why I wasn't the school issued device. The IT guy (who is a 3rd party contractor) followed up. The church we rent the building from did inspect the wifi because it wasn't just me & made upgrades (within the last month, before this happened). I also do not have word, PPT, etc on my work device and can't pull up the files that I need and they are too big for google drive (my daily PPT). That hasn't changed and I don't particularly enjoy google unless I have to use it. Others have it on their devices. So it was clearly an oversight and hasn't been fixed. I also can't download software, but I was told to use my document cam (also not provided by the school, my personal one). Damage to my device: 1) My touch pad is uneven and no longer works properly. 2) Certain keys on my keyboard are not sensitive to touch anymore or inconsistently sensitive. 3) on my screen there is a small crack in the corner (before the actual screen starts) 4) where my charging cord, hdmi, and usb are located took a direct impact. The part externally is bent, but doesn't impact the function to fit and use a device. However, at the corner there is a separation on the two pieces. 5) The crack and separation are both getting more noticeable as time goes on. Care: Device is always kept in a case, when not sitting my desk being used at home or school. Device is stored in my backpack. Nothing else is in the case and is an appropriate case for my size laptop. Device is closed on my desk when it not actively being used at school or home. Backpack is always on the floor of my passenger seat and isn't banging around. I evaluated my care of the device in the event I may have done something to cause the issues, but I haven't to my knowledge. So back to my original question: What do I do? School started in August. I was out due to Covid and returned at the end of September. The damaged happened in late October. Admin is aware of the aggressive behavior of the student and the damage to humans and things alike. It is documented in the behavior reports about both. We had an extended break in Nov. so I didn't use my laptop much which is why I didn't notice it sooner. Now I've been questioning if its worth reporting the damage or if I just need to accept personal responsibility for using my own device. I feel petty, but getting a new laptop right now isn't ideal.
We use our personal devices at our own risk. You could try pressing charges against the student, but I don’t know of anything else to try with the school.
We have HP laptops with ssds, 8 gbs of memory and 3 ghz processors. Your Dell is slow because: 1. It has a hard drive and not an SSD 2. It is low on memory 3. It has a slow processor You probably also have a malfunctioning wifi network card.
My personal is an hp. That makes sense. The dell is painful to use. They had to upgrade the wifi in the building. They had to completely rewire a bunch of stuff to allow all of our staff on the wifi. We had no direct wire to plug in either.
Yea, they probably rewired the cabling from the switches to the access points and may have upgraded the access points themselves. You can always use office 365 if you have a school email account that uses a domain that is compatible with office 365 free version. Why can't you download software? Do you need admin rights? Do you have enough storage for the software you're trying to download?
Are you saying that there are no Ethernet ports on the walls in your room or no Ethernet ports on your laptop? Are do you have both and just no Ethernet cables?
No port in the wall, no my knowledge no port on the dell, and even if I had both no plug on my wall. As it is the outlet that went to my project is on the other side of the room, which is how said student was able to get to my laptop in the first place. They have pens and software to use it as a smartboard.....but it wasn't installed on my dell and I wasn't given a pen. I asked the tech guy when my HDMI cord crapped out *AGAIN* (how I plug into the projector) why I wasn't able to use it as a touch screen with a pen like other teachers. I felt real stupid when he said the software wasn't on it. He holds the software for the projector and only comes once a week. I'll try to download office 360, but we don't have individual teacher accounts for the computer. Its just "staff" - which is another reason I don't prefer to use it. I miss my district job ONLY for the technology aspect. If something was wrong with my computer or laptop I could submit a support ticket and go to the high school - they would consider it an emergency at my school and send me right away if they didn't have loner for me to use and the onsite computer/tech teacher couldn't fix it.
Now about the elephant in the room...why isn't the behavior of the student being addressed? He threw a laptop 3-4 times?!! And was allowed back in class to do it again? It may have been time to end technology in this class and go back to dinosaur times...paper and pencil and textbooks until this student was handled appropriately.
The behavior situation has been addressed. Behavior plan is in place. I did go back to Dino times and packed my laptop away until I felt comfortable enough to pull it out again. Took a month. Student wanted to use our class chromebooks. Told them until I saw a substantial improvement in behavior it wasn’t an option. They had to earn my trust back. Best natural consequence ever because when they can’t use our reading and math program they love. Only downside is the kid knows how to read and spell fluently so tried to get onto YouTube. That’s another story! The behavior went on for a month while I was out due to quarantine. Took a month of me documenting and him getting sent home daily for a week and a half. Thankfully behavior has improved substantially. Parents are involved as are professionals. I do expect a set back after break because they will have been out for 5 weeks. Our winter break at school is 3 weeks plus teacher workdays the 4th week
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