MASA article - Is your district moving to the cloud?

Can technology directors be as reactionary as other professionals working in education? Most of us, I believe, have the reputation for doing our best to push the envelope, to create change, to foment revolution in our schools. Or at least educational technology writers and popular speakers at technology conferences would lead one to that conclusion. But at heart, might we “techies” be deeply resistant to change as well?

I get this feeling most strongly when I hear about technology departments raising barriers rather than creating possibilities about new resources especially when the objections seem rather spurious (security of GoogleApps, bandwidth for YouTube, predators on Facebook, licensing of Skype, etc.). Are the concerns real or are they raised to keep technology departments from doing something different, jeopardizing our roles, responsibilities, control, and budget?

Continued in:

Is Your District Moving to the Cloud? MASA Leaders Forum p9

http://mnasa.org/cms/lib6/MN07001305/Centricity/Domain/152/MASA%20Newsletter%20S16_web.pdf

Comments

[Kenn Gorman]

I just read an article about how many businesses are moving away from email and into messaging as their primary way to communicate. So I started to wonder - will this be the case for education? I can't imaging a teacher having to / being able to / required to respond to messages during the day as they come up.

If I was required to reply to each of the email I get as soon as it comes up, I don't think there would be much teaching going on.

I know that most students assume that they must reply to messages as soon as possible, which is why most of them whip out their phones as soon as the bell rings and are texting in between classes. Although I believe that messaging is valuable, I never understood the "requirement" to answer immediately.

I remember years ago seeing an add for telephone answering machines - and one of the reasons to get one was so you did not have to answer it even if you could...