We have an issue....

Last year I installed a computer lab for students to use for on-line learning classes. We made the decision to set up the lab using PC rather than our normal Mac computers, the reason for this was, I was sure, somewhere down the line, there would be an issue with something that would only work with PC and not Mac, you know this was sure to happen. So to avoid that problem we did PC, and gave us a chance to mess around with Vista (which by the way works well).

In order for this project to work, we felt it was best to put a teacher in the room to supervise rather than someone else, as the students would take it seriously, and the teacher was needed to supervise quizzes and tests. Therein lies the problem. Due to factors not under my control, these classes have been greatly under enrolled, most teachers have one or two students, several have none. So a few teachers, with multiple computers in their rooms decided to hold the sessions in their classrooms, with two exceptions, these classrooms have Macintosh computers. And so yesterday the inevitable occurred. I get a call saying one of the on line teachers could not read an attached file sent by a student, and I need to fix it. I tried to explain to the teacher that the reason the classes are held on PCs is to avoid this very problem!

I guess that explanation is not good enough. Now I have to explain up the food chain why I cannot “Make it work” , and the reason why the online lab is set up as it is. I was given trouble for using PCs there, now I guess I am getting problems because the teacher does not want to give up time in their room to cover their class where the class is to be held.

I could set up these classroom computers at a cost, to run windows, but why if we are all set just down the hall?

and so it goes