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Some still cling to the belief that technology is the latest
"craze" or "passing fad" for our nation's schools. They point
out that emphasizing the metric system or tinkering with the open
classroom was once considered every bit as revolutionary as today's
digital developments. But statistics do not support that assessment.
Consider these facts from Market Data Retrieval's Technology
in Education 1999: Schools last year averaged a 6:1 ratio of students
to computers in schools, up from 11:1 in 1994. Ninety percent
of schools reported having Internet access. More than half of
all schools had a home page on the web. Seventy percent of teachers
claimed to use computers daily.
It would be irresponsible for educational decision makers to
ignore these trends and developments under the guise of being
cautiously wise. Education, as an industry, moves much more slowly
than technology as an industry. Schools do not need to be on the
bleeding edge of every technological development. Communication,
research, and data analysis tools that worked last year will,
most likely, work this year as well. But a lack of vision regarding
the philosophy and application of technology can quickly become
a significant liability to the evolution of an institution of
learning. This is why it is increasingly vital for schools to
reevaluate the roles and responsibilities of their technology
personnel. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of
creatively addressing the structure of schools' technology departments,
which can be key to making the best use of complex machinery in
an educational environment.
Instant experts
Technology departments vary from school to school, but certain
commonalities seem to emerge. Led by dedicated, qualified network
administrators, school technology departments typically draw from
other academic departments. Those with a proclivity for, or personal
interest in, technology -- the English teacher who has an AOL
account, for instance, or the math teacher who understands formula
generation in MS Excel -- are often identified as computer-literate
and therefore qualified to maintain and guide a technological
physical plant that grows larger and more complex with each passing
month.
For some personnel who carry full teaching loads in other academic
disciplines while simultaneously maintaining their technology
responsibilities, the schedule gets hectic indeed. They teach
their classes, coach their sports, sponsor their extracurricular
clubs, counsel their advisees, attend their faculty meetings,
serve on their committees, and correct their students' written
work. Given these circumstances, the physical resources of the
typical technology department wear very thin, very quickly. A
recent thread about technology staffing and responsibilities on
the EdTech discussion group was rife with reports of staff burnout,
exhausting workloads, and staffing ratios completely out of synch
with developing programs.
Although it was never optimal, this ad hoc arrangement might
have worked five years ago. But new developments, especially the
laptop programs adopted by many schools in recent years, have
pushed toward a more aggressive pace in technological growth.
Schools of considerable size now often maintain a network architecture
that supports a variety of hardware and software resources in
a multi-platform environment. Server administration alone is becoming
a monumental responsibility, overseeing proxy servers, e-mail
servers, file servers, DHCP servers, and print servers. For schools
deploying a laptop distribution program, every student, teacher,
and administrator represents a separate hardware unit for which
the technology department is responsible. And that's in addition
to the desktop units commonly allocated for administrative and
lab use.
Keep in mind that the corporate standard is to have one support
personnel for every 50 PCs. In schools that distribute laptops
to every student, that means 400 students and faculty members
require a technology staff of eight -- hardly the norm.
Short staffing creates burdens that reverberate throughout a
school. English and biology teachers not only have to be expert
in metaphors or genetic cloning; they also must be knowledgeable
about TCP/IP, Java Script, the difference between T56A and T56B
in Cat 5 wiring, and DLL libraries.
Why aren't schools developing technology staffs that can meet
the needs of both students and faculty? Money, of course, is one
reason. But even if schools had overflowing coffers, problems
in K-12 settings still would not be solved as easily as they might
be in the corporate sector or at a university. Several obstacles
make the challenge of finding good personnel for K-12 technology
departments particularly difficult:
- The skill sets of prospective school employees are the same
skill sets many businesses are looking for, making it difficult
for schools to compete in the marketplace for human resources.
- Those who are qualified from a technology standpoint are
not necessarily appropriate personality "fits" for schools.
- School administrators are hesitant to hire nonteaching faculty
-- often referred to as "classified staff" -- because growing
enrollments mean they also need more athletic coaches and classroom
teachers, who contribute to the healthy teacher-to-student ratios
that parents and communities value so much.
- School administrators are themselves not fully aware of the
demands on technology personnel and might be ill-informed about
recent trends in technology and its application. As a result,
they might not fully understand what is needed.
- Finally, an argument can be made that the type of technology
support role most necessary in a K-12 educational environment
has yet to be fully defined. Toward that end, schools will have
to become involved in creating and defining a new breed of information-technology
professionals.
Improving teaching
Critics of the use of computers in education often argue, somewhat
obviously, that computers don't make better teachers. I have never
heard a technology advocate debate this point. I purchased a new
power drill last summer. Sadly, I am no better a carpenter.
In the April issue of the online LNT Perspectives, Glen Kleiman
dismisses the myth that putting computers in the classroom will
improve learning with two realities: (1) Teachers have not, or
do not perceive that they have, received adequate training in
the uses of technology or the mentorship necessary to integrate
technology into their curriculum; and (2) understaffed technology
departments translate into inadequate technical support, often
frustrating teachers and promulgating the idea that technology
is an unreliable teaching tool.
The quality of a school's teaching faculty is contingent on
its collective energy, enthusiasm, creative intelligence, and
adaptability to changing classroom-management demands. Likewise,
the quality of a school's technology-integration philosophy is
contingent on the way it harnesses these talents and employs them
in viable and worthwhile ways, offering guidance and moral support
where needed.
The question of integrating technology in the classroom is the
dominant issue presently concerning technology in education. In
the final analysis, a school cannot benefit from technology if
technology is not applied, no matter how efficiently or brilliantly
that technology is maintained. My vacuum cleaner works perfectly,
but this does not enhance my enthusiasm for using it.
With the introduction of new hardware and increased demands
on support staff comes the vital question: How will this help
us teach? Inevitably, this question is asked first not of the
teachers themselves, but of technologists. Other questions follow:
What will the thousands of dollars spent on the machines buy in
terms of accountability? How will parents react? What can we do
to get our faculty to enthusiastically embrace technology?
Technology departments, at their best, now serve as conduits,
bridging the gap between the technology industry and the classroom.
The practice of education remains firmly rooted in the ability
to communicate ideas and information; in other words, it is an
industry that relies not on machines, but on people. So schools
face the challenge of constructing a technology department that
is as facile with RAM chips and domain-name servers as it is with
high school sophomores and third-grade teachers, and technology
personnel must be as comfortable in the faculty lounge as they
are in the computer lab.
Because a teacher's daily schedule leaves little time for learning
new software or experimenting with computer applications, the
burden for paving the way for fluid integration and a sense of
empowerment among the faculty rests with the technology department.
Once again, this is an evolving role: Who is to teach the teachers,
and in what fashion? This role is just as important as the support
responsibilities.
Doing it right
School officials are faced with serious decisions, pedagogically
and financially, in deciding how and where technology will be
used. As the landscape changes (and it will), perceptions and
values must also change, so as to better navigate the new terrain.
But certain principles should remain valid:
1. The responsibilities and roles of the technology department
need constant reevaluation. The technology department is not the
science department or the history department. It involves dynamic,
changing work, which cannot be done on a part-time basis. John
Porter, director of technology at Eagle Hill School in Greenwich,
Conn., worries about having "the time to do everything, keeping
abreast of the evolving technology." And he is not alone.
In a white paper prepared for the Arizona Technology in Education
Alliance, Hank Stabler notes, "A point is reached where the skills
become too specialized, or the time demands too great, to continue
with a part-time or untrained person. The use of part-time staff
or teachers who have classroom responsibilities also means response
time will be constrained and users who cannot receive immediate
assistance will be angry and frustrated."
More schools now are employing consultants or outsourcing certain
tasks. While this is a good solution for some, it is not always
appropriate or desirable. In addition to worrying about the expense,
some administrators say that outside consultants don't fully understand
education or the special environment of particular schools.
2. Financial resources must be allocated in a fashion that allows
fluid asset-management strategies. Entire hardware complexes cannot
be replaced every 10 years, but instead should be upgraded incrementally
at regular intervals. Standardization of hardware resources is
a functional method for reducing technology problems, at both
the administrative and end-user level. Additionally, districts
must accept the long-term, or total cost of ownership, demands
of hardware purchases, which suggests adequate budgetary commitments
to technical support and service. As the Consortium for School
Networking warns, "If schools don't do this kind of planning for
their technology budgets, there may not be enough money available
to provide teachers with adequate training, to maintain new computers
or to replace them when they become obsolete. ... As a result,
America's investment in educational technology could fall short
of its expected return."
3. Finally, technology departments must redefine themselves
as integral parts of the school. With each passing day, technology
becomes increasingly interwoven in the daily mechanisms of education.
We will have reached a significant plateau, I believe, when people
stop talking about technology in education. (When was the last
time you read an op-ed piece debating the relative merits of spiral
notebooks, mechanical pencils, or photocopiers in education?)
But we're not there yet.
Technology departments need to own up to the responsibilities
inherent in their work and embrace the challenges, as frustrating
and deflating as they might be. Technologists need to look occasionally
beyond the daily task list of printer repairs, service pack upgrades,
GUI bugs, or disk image recovery and remember that this work is
about more than the machines. It is ultimately about one's impact
on the educational process and on the lives of the people who
work on the front lines of that process.
Can one educate without computers? Of course. One can also educate
without overhead transparencies, filmstrips, research facilities,
blackboards, videotapes, and textbooks. But what new horizons
in communication might be lost, what potential experiences for
students might be missed? Those who work in school technology
departments must be exemplary, patient, knowledgeable, flexible,
diligent, accessible. In other words, they must be teachers in
the truest sense of the word.
Richard
M. Beattie is director of technology
at Brunswick School in Greenwich, Conn.
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