Sidebar: The Power of Ideas

By Kevin Bushweller

Kevin Bushweller is an associate editor of Electronic School.

Talk to school technology people, and you'll hear some strong opinions about who knows best when it comes to making technology work in schools. Many would say teachers and principals do, because they're the ones who know how technology can enhance what happens in classrooms. These same people would suggest that ideas and decisions imposed by top management are too far removed and threaten a school's technological vitality.

In reality, though, this isn't exactly how things work out. More often, school leaders listen to the ideas teachers and principals have about technology, but then make decisions based on factors the top leaders consider more important. So, teachers and principals might ask for Macintosh computers, but they get IBMs; or they might request IBMs but get Macintosh machines.

In some cases, management's decisions are disheartening for people in schools and even disastrous. But in others, the people in charge of school technology have good reasons for imposing their decisions on those working in the trenches. And sometimes, those top-down decisions save the district some serious headaches.

Such is the case at Arcadia Middle School in Greece, N.Y. Jerry Taylor, Arcadia's technology coordinator, says his school is planning to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 to buy more computers. Although many teachers would rather have Macintosh computers, he says, the school will probably purchase IBMs because that's what is used in the central office. The irony is that the district considers itself a site-based management system, but Taylor says people at the building level feel pressure not to stray from the district's network of IBM computers. Taylor says if his school purchased Macs, it would become "an island unto itself . . . an aberration" that would be cut off from many district services.

"We don't have people out here trained to service Macs," says Taylor, who was a science and math teacher before he became technology coordinator. "It would take weeks just to get the simplest thing repaired. People need to consider that when they make those kinds of [purchasing] decisions."

Ideas about what software to use, on the other hand, often bubble up from the bottom and are approved, Taylor says. It's common for teachers at his school to find new software they can use in their classrooms. And, he says: "I don't think there are too many people here that get refused."

Teachers who want to purchase new software must convince the members of a software review committee that the product is worth the money. In his district, there is a software review committee in each school building. Each committee has six or seven members, consisting of teachers, parents, administrators, and technology coordinators.

Taylor says the committees help schools prevent teachers and administrators from being swayed by software companies' slick advertisements. "What we don't want is for schools to get these pieces of junk that end up in drawers. That happens. We try to overcome that with the preview process."

Russell Smith, an education technology consultant for the Region 14 Education Service Center in Texas, says most decisions about technology in the 43 districts he assists "are made from the top down--not by the technology coordinators but by business managers, assistant superintendents, and superintendents."

But, he says, "I don't think you should just force technology down teachers' throats. In the best of worlds, you should have a give-and-take going in both directions."

In one case in Texas, that give-and-take was missing. Smith says a computer lab teacher at a middle school requested that the district equip her lab with Apple II GS machines because that's what she felt most comfortable using. Those machines were already becoming outdated when she requested them. Even so, the district spent thousands of dollars to equip a technology lab with the equipment. "That was a bad decision," Smith says. "[That technology] was obsolete when they put it in there."

Clearly, Smith says, anyone who was knowledgeable about technology would have refused the lab teacher's request to purchase outdated equipment. But there was nobody above her with that knowledge. In this case, Smith says a stupid idea rose from the bottom, and there was no mechanism in place at the top to squelch it. The top and the bottom failed, Smith says: "Hardware people just prey on school districts because they know they're stupid. And the superintendents are usually the ones approving the funds."

What schools need are ideas and decisions flowing from the bottom and the top, he says. Microsoft's Windows 95 presents an excellent example. Smith says the design of Windows 95 is where software is headed and to ignore it would be like ignoring the future.

Consequently, Smith says school leaders would be wise to push educators to use Windows 95 because people often have a tendency to "stay with the status quo." But, he says, teachers and others being pushed to use the software must insist that the district have machines that are fast enough to run Windows 95. "Otherwise, there will be a lot of wasted time," he says. "And every second you spend looking at the [computer's] hourglass [is] lost productivity."