I'm rather fortunate in the technology I have available to me here.
1. Chalkboards and chalk.
2. An unlimited supply of office copy paper (within reason) and two functional copy machines.
3. A teacher's PC terminal which is connected to the office printer via the network and a personal desk (this is a really big deal here everybody).
4. A school computer lab with enough computers for every student in every class, and it's in the same building as the rest of my classes this semester! Last semester it was several buildings away. We don't have passing periods since mostly the teachers move and the classes don't, that was stressful.
5. Each classroom has a PC, a sound system, a projector and screen that rolls up and down. Most teachers have and use a microphone, but us foreigners usually don't.
6. The computers all use the Windows Operating System. Whether or not they are 'genuine' copies of windows is up to debate.
7. The school as a whole has a high speed internet connection, however it's often being reconfigured, unavailable in part of the building, or cuts out altogether. I've cut back my lesson planning with internet greatly because there's just no telling if it'll work during the 45-50 minute period you've got that class. Also, the whole school network is viral. External websites often inform me of this fact, disable portions of their page, and urge me to run virus scan measures. By the whole network, I mean the whole university campus, not just my middle school/high school portion of the network. There's an article about the issue in my diigo bookmarks.
8. The IT department here is quite supportive, however sometimes there is a language barrier (less this semester) and other times I just don't want to add to the poor tech's workload when my educational objective can be met just as well with plain old chalk, pen and paper.
My students already get so distracted by their phones (supposed to be handed in to homeroom teachers during the day), their new iPads they pass around and play games on, etc., sometimes I think just keeping things on paper helps maintain their attention better. The class I see most often we utilize the computer lab once a week for various research tasks, and I'm pondering how else to use that time that's educationally beneficial and culturally sensitive.
Oh, and the most important technology we have: air conditioning!
