Technology Leadership
Posted by bmellott on July 5th, 2008
Chapter 6 in Web 2.0 addresses technology leadership in the schools. The emphasis on technology has to start at the top and work down to the classroom. This does not mean that administrators must be technology experts, just as we would not expect them to be experts in specific content area. Technology leadership should focus more on the leadership than on the technology. Technologies change and new tools are readily available for teachers to use. Technology leaders should remember to remain flexible, allowing teachers to use those tools that most adequately address the needs of their subject areas and of their students and encouraging them to use and view new tools.
Discussions of financing technology in the schools revolve largely around collaboration of federal, state, and corporate initiatives, weighing costs and benefits of initial and maintenance costs for equipment, and the use of open source software. Some might argue that we cannot afford not to provide students with the opportunities to learn about and experience the technologies that they will need as they move on to life after high school. While this long-term view may be accurate, the short-term reality is that school budgets are stretched as they are. Such expenses may simply be too much for local school systems to incur without state and corporate support. The discussion on open source software was an interesting one. On the one hand, the use of free systems such as Linux could save local systems a great deal of money on both operating systems and software applications. On the other hand, most teachers, administrators, and students are familiar with applications such as MS Word or MS Excel and use these applications at home. Further, most corporations rely on MS Office products in their business operations. Familiarizing students with applications that they are unlikely to use seems, to me, to be irresponsible. Again, corporate involvement seems, to me, to be an appropriate solution to this funding problem because corporations are the most probable benefactors when students learn the tools that they will use in their future jobs.
July 5th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Interesting post. I have to say that I’m not so sure that the emphasis on technology at schools has to start at the top. More and more schools seem to be waiting for a mandate, when in fact technology is moving at the speed of light whether or not that mandate arrives. I think it is the teacher’s responsibility to think hard about and integrate technology into the curriculum.
Moreover, the cost of entry is become less and less. Let’s talk about open source software for a moment. This blogging system run on WordPress Multi-User (an open source publishing platform) cost UMW $30 a month over the last year to externally host. What school couldn’t afford that? It would be dangerous to conflate open source with Linux operating systems, open source comes in many shapes and forms now, and the web is increasingly moving towards web-based applications rather than client-side applications. More and more companies are adopting open source software because it is often more reliable, safer, and cost effective. We will increasingly be doing our word and data processing in the “cloud” (or using a number of distributed servers to host our information) using applications like Google Docs, Flickr, YouTube, and even WordPress.
I’s not sure corporations should be guiding the decision of what applications schools use, especially when the good ones are generally free or very cheap with the explosion of Web 2.0 tools. The future is not word processing and PowerPoint, it is data visualization, video, audio, video games, and virtual worlds. These are often not particular to any operating system, and we will see, sooner than later, that the web browser is all we will need to bring real innovation into the classroom. Technology need not be expensive, that is just a vestigial reflex of the first 15 years of IT shops. Increasingly we will have externally hosted applications and browser based programs that will constitute the lion’s share of where we do our work, and if open source isn’t the key, than online and free is. Why spend money for bad Learning Management Systems that will never bring a student or class closer to what it means to be learning in relationship to technology? Why not let the students pick their own sets of tools? We have to assume they are learning online already, whether or not we understand it as such.
July 6th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I don’t believe that starting at the top means waiting for a mandate. I believe that it means creating a culture where teachers do not have to wait for a mandate. If everything is mandated, would you feel comfortable doing anything beyond that?
I agree with you that the cost of entry is becoming less and less. However, many small, rural counties find difficulty purchasing, maintaining, and upgrading hardware, software, and network components. As for software and the use of open source, I agree with you that open source software is not limited to Linux. That is one example, however, that many people are familiar with. I further agree with you that more and more companies are adopting open source software. However, the nation’s major employers are now only lightly tapping these resources with small initiatives. Most employees in government, business, service sectors are not using open source software for the majority of their tasks. These reason for this is pretty simple. Employers, at this stage, would rather pay the licensing fees and get the service agreements than hire teams of people to maintain the software. As licensing fees increase, we may see this turn towards open source, but I do not see this happening for another 10 to 15 years. On top of that, the practice of requiring students to complete assignments through web-based applications seems, to me, a bit questionable at this point. When 42% of U.S. households do not have an internet connection, much less a broadband connection, I do not feel right assigning vast amounts of work that they must complete online at home.
As for the question of corporate involvement in education decisions, I have to disagree with you. While they should not be making the decisions, they should be as involved as any other stakeholder in American education. Our current students are their future employees. While some students may be working in data visualization, video, audio, etc. in the future, most will be managers or consultants writing reports, presentations, and speeches and interfacing with workers and other managers around the globe.
I embrace information technology and believe that its use will help solve many of our world’s problems. I also understand that our nation’s leaders now, and for the next 20 years, are, and will be, skeptical, at best, about its use. We need to prepare students to be able to use the tools that they will likely use when they reach the workplace and to be able to use the other tools as they become more mainstream. That is responsible teaching.
July 6th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Hello again,
I was just wondering about that 42% figure of US households without access to the internet. Recent studies show that number if far, far smaller, closer to 18%, with the number of households online at 82% http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/3742…). Also, broadband access has just broken 50% http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/07…). Assuming these figures are roughly accurate, I imagine penetration would be much higher amongst households with young, school age kids, for the elder population still represents the majority of folks still uninterested in going online, with good reason.
Additonally, the idea that we are training managers and consultants seems to narrow the scope of an education to some great degree. I always thought the mandate of a public education was to cultivate responsible, well-adjusted citizens, and what becomes key to being a responsible citizen is the ability to find, filter, and analyze information within a social context. And while I think these qualities would ultimately be helpful to the business world, it is not necessarily the prime directive of schools to prepare students for such a future. It is more a question of literacy, as you point out beautifully in an earlier post, and for schools the reality that literacies are changing as the medium through which we find information becomes hyperactive is of particular interest for me.
I agree with your notion that nation’s leaders may take a while to catch on to this reality, but I just don’t think that reality will wait for leaders in general, and schools specifically. Thanks for the thoughtful response and helping me think through some of these ideas.