Great post and informative comments! I teach English at a nationally known public high school with a well-meaning but still overly bureaucratic IT dept at the district level. We had and lost digital high school funds when the Governator pulled funding unexpectely. Bottom line: creating and maintaining good tech support is well-nigh impossible without stable funding and personnel.

My go-to tech tool is an Airliner, basically a portable SmartBoard that projects anything from my computer, including un-blocked websites and Keynote presentations that I bring from home via a thumb drive. (Wish I had an ELMO!) Also, so far none of the Google Tools for Educatores is blocked, and kids can access those from home. Caveat: content is publicly searchable :-(

I got a small grant to publish my own password-protected webpages on Typepad, IMHO superior to the BlackBoard system endorsed by the district and many colleges, but either is pretty good for communication and transmitting info.

The biggest obstacle in all of this, of course, is TIME! Best wishes to all of us who never seem to have enough….