They really need to start training teachers in how to use computers. I hardly new how to use those Apple computers yet I was always correcting and helping the new computer teacher. It was sad.

Maybe if you send the teacher and pricipal a few webpages about FireFox and what it does, they may change their minds. Make sure to add in two or three articles about how FireFox protects computers from many viruses that IE can't protect the computer from.

And they should require all teachers to take a good computer class before becoming a teacher. It would save many students from having problems with teachers that are caused because of the teacher's ignorance.

This post has been edited by CinnamorollTK: Apr 21 2006, 11:13 PM

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one with problems with teachers and computers. However, I bet that even if I did send the pages and describe it more, they wouldn't understand a word of it. Plus, on their list of "trusted" software, they pretty much have only Microsoft products. Here's their list:

Most of those, I don't really like. Plus, they don't even acknowledge that there may be better programs that are distributed for free. There are only a select few teachers that actually let me do what I want on a computer (and one is a computer teacher). Anyway, I found out the reason why exactly I got kicked out of the activity (and it did invole the use of FF). However, her explanation was very bizarre. I can't even remember it now. I do know one teacher who knows a LOT about computers (and he's even used Linux). I could probably talk to him about it.

One last thing that I want to add:
That computer lab teacher did mention that she needs more training. The way it seems to me, is that our school has so little money, that they can't afford it. Whatever the reason, I wish that the teachers wouldn't be so ignorant about the use of a new program. I don't think that I'll ever understand some of these computer teachers.

Hamtaro, that software list looks pretty good actually. A number of the Business/IT teachers at my school could only use the Microsoft Office Suite and do some minimal browsing and MYOB. It was rather pathetic, but I guess the course only required them to know this - apparantly the basics of computing comprise of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and IE.

Anyway, best of luck with getting your internet at school back...

Our computer teacher knows only powerpoint, excel, word, and publisher so I know how that feels. Even the tech guys at school couldn't fix a small problem with the dvd burner on one of the better computers in my gifted class... Our school actually has FF on the computers but more sites are blocked that I use than ones I don't use. We're not allowed to bring any devices in to connect to the computer so I think you are lucky. I feel your pain though. My computer teacher doesn't have a website and I do if that tells you how much more I know than her...

Dude, that's jappened to me loads of times. I use portable firefox all the timeand that's not the only reason I've gotten into trouble. Once it was for using my old cheap MP3 player as a flash key, another time I tried enabling java console because any web application done in jscript was non-functional, I used a CGI proxy for getting past sites that they block but they shouldn't, and numerous other things. One time I fixed the computer and my old computer teacher got mad. I used a live CD with slax on it (linux shrunken down) and that same teacher thought I tinkered with the computer and installed something. To tell you the truth, I would prefer to bring in my laptop for school then using those computers. And all the keyboards are horrible! Have you ever tried to type something at 50 WPM on a half-broken keyboard? That's my typing speed. And I simply can't to it on those keyboards (I'm so used to my laptop keyboard, I need to get out of that habit). At my town's high school, they use macs. I'm happy to hear that because guess what saffari was based on? KDE's Konqueror. (another great linux web browser) It has tabs, just not so popular becuase it's a linux exclusive. But eventually, they will have people bring in their own computers, most people have laptops, they just need to make them so consumer-avalable that everyone can afford one. Look at the $100 dollar laptop idea, that's awsome. I may get one anyway just for the hell of it. So, I don't expect to see this coming soon, but I think it will happen in about 10 years or so.

This post has been edited by psychiccyberfreak: Mar 29 2007, 01:06 AM

All computer teachers have no idea what they are doing when it comes to computers. This year we had an Excel project in computer class. We had to convert miles to kilometers for something I am not sure what it was. My computer teacher said their was a formula to do this and she said its not the one for multiplying the cells. Many people including myself told her their was no such formula. She said there was and some kid claimed to get it working. It turned out to be the multiplication formula the teacher said we can not use but she was telling us to use it then. We also could not copy him we had to come up with our own formula which is not possible. Talk about knowing nothing about computers. She had an even worse time teaching us HTML. When we had to create our final pages, which were disgraces by the way since she taught us nothing about CSS so we could not get decent looking pages. I figured I learned something useful and went on HTML help sites to advance my skills. I come to realize she did not even tell us the first starting tag (the document type). If she is teaching us HTML she should have taught us that if you ask me.

Wow, some of your situations are much worse than mine! I never thought there'd be so many schools with computer teachers that know very little about computers! I thought that it was just where I lived in Kentucky (which just about the whole state knows very little).

Anyway, I also got into a situation at the public library. They have that stupid auto-complete on for IE (and it is a public account, which is actually the only one). I was going to disable auto complete so I could log in to Trap17 (I don't like stuff like that). The person there saw me, and apparantly thought I was messing with something else. She told me, "You're not supposed to be on that. If you do that again, you will have your Internet privileges taken away." That was as if I knew nothing about them!

It seems like people like that are everywhere. I wonder if there's anything I could possibly do about these people.

I took a computer class in my senior year of high school. That was in 1985. The year before my brother had helped them install a computer system. It was state of the art at the time. It consisted of a host terminal and 16 offshoots. The system used TRS 80s (trash 80s to us). We learned pascal. I was good at it and often helped other students. It was there that I discovered that not everyone thought like I did and they had alternative ways of doing things that often worked just as well or better. I had an assignment to create an alphabetizing program. My version took 2 hours to alphabetize 2000 names. It was considered fast for the time and they used it for the schools administration records. What I learned in that class was very valuable and I use it even now. Programming principles are pretty much the same no matter what the language is. It is funny to hear these people complain about not being able to use the computers fully at school. Remember there was a time when we didn't have them at all.