Decisions I don't want to make as a tech director

While we all crave power and control at some level, there are quite a few policies and procedures I simply do not want to create - or at least create unilaterally - as a tech director. Nor should any tech director working in education. These decisions include:

• What Internet resources to filter
• What devices to use in 1:1 programs
• What e-books, e-texts, databases, adaptive learning programs, and other instructional materials to use
• What (or if) games should be allowed in school
• What learning management system to support
• What computer OS to support
• Whether to use a classroom device monitoring system
• Whether to support interactive white boards
• What metrics are used to determine student/teacher/school success

It's my experience that too many school IT folks forget to discriminate between setting policies and enforcing policies. And while I am more than happy to provide guidance based on my IT knowledge, teaching experience, education, librarianship, and readings, those setting educational goals should have the final say in these decisions. I am happy to share my (often strong) opinions, but I always want to be considered as one voice among many.

Too often instructional leaders are happy to pass all responsibility for technology implementation, including policy-setting, on to the technology department. Bad move. As I've written before, teachers and techs usually have competing priorities.

Teachers are usually about access, effectiveness, and ease of use.
Techs are usually about adequacy, reliability, and security.

All worthy priorities. But competing.

Remember my fellow tech directors, just because you are given the power to make an educational decision, doesn't mean you must do it.

A good policy for good policies
Librarians are from Venus; technologists are from Mars
Problem or dilemma?

Image source

BFTP: Changing Role of the CTO

As we look to the future, every K-12 technology leader reading this article should consider the following challenges:

• Forget about IT as you know it today;
• Get ready to outsource IT;
• Let go of the desire to control;
• Embrace diversity in the IT environment;
• Blow the lid off of storage limits; and
• Quit saying things like, “A wired network infrastructure will always be necessary because wireless will never be fast enough for everything.”

from Robert J Moore, The Future of Information Technology: How The Next Ten Years Will Fundamentally Change the Role of the K-12 CTO: Executive Summary*, November 2010, COSN

Ah, the one constant in our media and technology department since I started in 1991 has been change. There have never really been the same set of challenges, frustrations, and successes two years in a row. And according to this COSN paper cited above, we're in for another major shift (which we are already starting to experience). I wonder if the majority of school tech directors are getting the message?

Outsourcing, loss of control, diversity? Anathema to many "classically" trained IT folks, I realize. But as school leaders who are facing budget crunches come to realize that real cost savings can be had by moving to the cloud and contracting for maintenance, these uncomfortable realities will be the new "normal" in technology departments.

I see tech leadership skills moving from:

• Configuring a network or server to mediating a contract for an ASP.
• Supervising technicians to evaluating out-sourced work and setting up effective helpdesks.
• Writing technology plans to working inter-departmentally with curriculum, staff-development, public relations, assessment and strategic planning.
• Providing technology devices to staff and students to providing access to school resources for personal devices. 
• Writing policies that dictate behaviors to writing guidelines and curricula that encourage safe and responsible use.
• Knowing less about the "how" of a new technology to the "why" of a new technology in education.
• Maintaining the status quo to selecting and planning for new technology applications and best practices.

Tech directors, we've been asking our schools to change for many years. Are we prepared to change our own roles?

Or is it: Change is good. You go first.

In what other ways is (or should) the role of IT leadership be changing?

*Unfortunately the complete report is a COSN "members only" publication. Too bad since the piece would be of value to superintendents and HR directors. I have been requested not to share it, so don't even ask...

Image source

Original post November 16, 2010

This post was expanded into a column for Eductional Leadership that can be found here.

Thanksgiving 2005

I first shared this 10 years ago. Still works for me...  

Middle Jefferson Lake, LeSueur County, MN, November 23, 2005, 7AM

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
    dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

I'm thankful for the teachers who made me memorize poetry and things like sunrises that bring those poems to mind. Happy Thanksgiving.