Technology at Westfield High School

Technology is in the hand of the beholder.  Saying this I mean that how one views technology at Westfield depends on how one views technology.  If your idea of technology is one teacher laptop, a digital projector, sixteen student laptops shared between three teachers, and one SmartBoard shared between seven teachers then Westfield is looking good on the technology front.  If not then if you want technology, then be prepared to write a grant or spend some of your own money.  I bought a laptop and an Interwrite Pad just to get to what I consider to be the bare minimum.  I personally think that there should be enough laptops in a school for each student to have their own laptop.  Not buying the textbooks they don't read would go a long way to paying for some of those laptops.  In addition I believe that classes should have clickers or be allowed to use something like the "Vclicker" software that turns cell phones into clickers.  Westfield (and Fairfax County for that matter) is a frustrating place if one wants to be ahead of the technology curve.  I tried to get permission to use a free trial of a web based artificial intelligence chemistry tutoring software and was told that I had to go (way) up the ladder to have it approved.    The students now days don't respond to the same old same old methods of the past.  They were born with more technology than I had the first twenty-five years of my life.  With that said if the schools don't start adjusting on the fly we will lose our students (at least their interest) the way the church that I grew up in lost members through the eighties and nineties with the "If it ain't in the hymnal" (spoken with my most proper English) attitude that has all but about closed the doors in several churches.  We must do better!