Aaron Headly

Aaron Headly, former technical support specialist at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, talks about the importance of on-site technical support if high-performance technology is incorporated into the curriculum. Excerpted from a videotaped interview for the video series Learning with Technology, program #2, Tools for Thinking (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1995).

"If you're planning on bringing this level of technology into a classroom, it's important to remember that the teachers are there because of their knowledge of curriculum and their ability to teach and if the computer is just going to be a tool help them teach, you can't type the teacher with questions like my machine won't boot, you're power supply won't go wrong. There's a thousand little things that can go wrong that are relatively easy to fix, but if there's not someone there to do it, the class is going to go to a halt, and it's a trained teacher's time to deal with these little problem, and if that's what they spend their whole time doing, then the whole thing's stuck."

Date posted: 1997