What a day! I had been looking forward to this day all week. I was taking the top set year 9s to the computer room. When I began working with them, I explained that the next 8 weeks would be based on them being members of a company in Wales expanding to French-speaking countries and that they were going to have to get to know their countries (which they picked out of an envelope on the first day) and give a presentation on them. They would later on also make travel arrangements to these countries and make brochures and itineraries in order to allow for company directors to be able to travel to these countries.

It was all going so well. I had planned thoroughly. I prepared sample worksheets and presentations, I had prepared useful language pages and set everything up on Edmodo, the site I am using for this experiment as well links to English and French speaking websites. I explained and went over everything before going to the computer room, students knew the objectives for the hour.

We arrive in the computer room, students sit down, log onto Edmodo, and surprise, surprise - nothing works! The students can at least log in, which I can't do on the teacher's computers, but none of the links work, the documents are in the new format instead of the old, and all they can really do is google and put pictures on PowerPoint presentations.

I was gutted! I had prepared everything!

It's such a shame that some of the neediest kids don't have available to them even the most basic of technology. I would be using sites such as edmodo and quizlet much more in class and thereby giving the students an idea of how they could be using technology at home for themselves to help themselves improve. Videos and student blogs would be much more of an option, as well as students making their own blogs and video blogs.But if I can't even demonstrate it in class, then what is going to motivate them to use these tools at home as well? We are supposed to be teaching students to be able to function in today's society, yet, they aren't provided to tools to do so.