Efficacious Technology Management: a guide for School Leaders

Introduction

The technicians among us have deployed computers that connect to servers, switches, routers, and other network devices so the Internet is available from nearly every corner of nearly every classroom in our schools. We use sophisticated software to manage those networks; our networks store and protect all varieties of school data. Further, our networks provide robust and reliable access to vast information and global interaction through devices that our schools own and that students, faculty, and staff own and bring to school. That information technology (IT) infrastructure has not, however, transformed teaching and learning in a manner that has been promised by so many advocates. The observation that much teaching and learning remains as it was prior to the arrival of digital tools continues to be made by scholars who study teaching and learning (Luckin, Bligh, Manches, Ainsworth, Crook, & Noss, 2012; OECD, 2015; Tondeur, van Braak, Ertmer, & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2017).

The laggardly rate at which technology has changed what happens in classrooms may not be surprising, however. Larry Cuban, a well-known scholar from Stanford University, studied the effects of electronic media (radio, television, and movies) on education earlier in the 20th century and found them to be inconsequential. He noted, “Claims predicting extraordinary changes in teacher practice and students’ learning, mixed with promotional tactics, dominated the literature in the initial wave of enthusiasm for each new technology” (Cuban, 1986, p. 4), but, he noted, observation proved these tools no better than teachers using other information technology at conveying information. Something appears different, however, about computers and digital networks compared to earlier media. For the most part, earlier electronic media did not become as widely used for official purposes in the way digital technology is used for legal and governmental communication. Nor did it become so widely adopted for interaction, nor did it become widely used for people to create information in the manner digital tools have. Previous generations of American citizens listened to the radio for entertainment as they completed paper copies of their income tax returns which were mailed to the Internal Revenue Service. Now, we listen to streaming media and carry on conversations via text messaging as we file our tax returns via the Internet. In those areas where IT infrastructure has been installed it has come to dominate all aspects of economic, political, social, and cultural life.

The leaders of almost every school face the same challenging situation: They must create schools that reflect the dominant role of digital IT in society and they must prepare students for that world; but the changing landscape of teaching, inadequate technical expertise, and limited resources are genuine barriers to this work. What we know, how we know it, and what we know about learning is advancing at a rate that fast outpaces teachers’ capacity to respond to it. Operating and maintaining the IT systems in schools requires expertise that is far beyond that of the “tech-savvy” teachers who managed the first IT systems installed in schools. IT professionals who are “imported” into education from other businesses and industries often find the practices, assumptions, and expectations that served them well in other settings do not transfer into education. Teachers and students are different from workers, and the IT (including the hardware, the software configurations, and the personnel) they rely on for their work must accommodate those differences. IT is also a capital-intensive aspect of operating schools. Devices and network upgrades can consume years’ worth of technology budgets in a short time, and the total cost of ownership of devices places on-going demands on budgets. Further, technology introduces new and rapidly evolving regulatory and policy issues into school management.

The situation regarding IT management in many schools is well-captured by the hypothetical (and sarcastic) Putt’s Law. According to Archibald Putt, “Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand” (Putt, 2006, p. 7). Further, Putt articulated a corollary, “Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion” (p. 7). While these words are intended to be humorously cynical observations, they do describe the current state of IT management in schools:
• Technology professionals configure IT systems for students and teachers, but they are unfamiliar with emerging technology-rich pedagogy. In Putt’s terms, IT professionals are managing devices for purposes they do not understand.
• Educators complain about the IT systems in schools, but they don’t understand the complexity of management, the potential conflicts and threats, and general chaos that can result when enterprise networks are not tightly controlled. In Putt’s terms, educators seek to manage IT they do not understand.
• School leaders make budget and personnel decisions that impose unrealistic limits on IT professionals and they advocate for practices beyond the capacity of the available IT or are contrary to the professional tendencies of the teachers.

The schools that will prepare students to participate in the digital world must be places in which IT infrastructure is available and functioning; the existence of this infrastructure is absolutely dependent on skilled IT professionals to operate and maintain it. These schools are also absolutely dependent upon skilled educators who plan and facilitate learning experiences in which students access, manipulate, analyze, create, and disseminate information using the IT. Teachers’ critiques of the of the IT they use as well as their requests for new features must be accommodated by IT professionals because educators best understand how the IT effects students. Further, these are schools are absolutely dependent upon school administrators understand the demands of maintaining IT in an operational state as well as the emerging needs of teachers. Together; educators, IT professionals, and school administrators must collaborate for efficacious technology management in schools.

Efficacious IT Management

Within any organization, leaders define a small number of strategic goals; these indicate the conditions they seek to make true and the success of the organization is determined by the degree to which these goals are accomplished. When an organization achieves its strategic goals, we recognize the leaders and members have been efficacious. Throughout this book, I refer to “efficacious IT managers” which is a group comprising teachers, IT professionals, and school leaders whose decisions and actions lead to the strategic goals being realized

Each community defines its own strategic goals, but I fully expect every reader of this book is associated with (or hopes to become associated with) a school in which leaders have articulated a strategic goal such as “Students will fully participate in the communication life of our society which is dominated by digital information technologies.” (My choice of words models John Dewey, who is credited with saying “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” Therefore, the strategic goal is written to participate in the information life of society, not simply to prepare students for it.)

This book was written to support school professionals (educators, technicians, and leaders) as they become efficacious IT managers. It concerns both the decisions they make and the actions they take to ensure the information technology infrastructure installed in schools is useful to teachers as they help learners become citizens in the emerging digital world. This book is intended to help IT professionals understand the world of education and for educators to understand the world of IT.

Because strategic goals are generally too broad to guide meaningful action, planners define logistic goals. In situations where the logistic goals are aligned with the strategic goal, there will exist a positive association between achieving the logistic goals and achieving the strategic goal. With regards to information technology in schools, logistic goals must ensure decisions are made and actions taken to ensure technology is appropriate, proper, and reasonable (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Dimensions of efficacious IT management
• Teachers (whose who spend their days working directly with students) steer decision-making processes so that IT systems are appropriately configured to be useful for the curriculum they teach, the pedagogical methods they employ, and the developmental circumstances of their students.
• IT professionals implement decisions so that IT systems are properly configured; this ensures the IT is operational, functions as expected, and is secure.
• School administrators govern decision making to ensure IT systems are reasonably configured and supported to meet the needs of learners and to reflect local priorities and limits. Reasonableness is a relative term and it is defined locally; budgets, existing policy and procedure, and similar factors affect what is deemed reasonable.

A situation I encountered when writing an early draft of this book serves to illustrate how proper, appropriate, and reasonable configurations of IT can influence teaching and learning. I was asked to help resolve some “network problems” in a school. Math teachers had complained that students could not access the online grade book from the computers provided under the recently begun one-to-one initiative. It turned out the network administrator had configured the permissions and switching so that students were unable to access the online grade book while at school. He reasoned, “We need to prevent students from trying to ‘hack’ their grades.” The principal responded, “That seems an insignificant threat, and it prevents students from tracking their grades when they are here at school. It is essential they be able to see their grades while in class with their teachers present” and he directed the network administrator to reconfigure the network. In this case, the network administrator properly configured the network (he had successfully prevented students from accessing the server), but the configuration was inappropriate (it prevented access to information necessary for teaching and learning), and it was deemed unreasonable (thus the school administrator who had authority insisted the configuration be changed).

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