Comments on: I’m an enabler

By: kerri

kerri — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:10:33 +0000

I think that your attitude is really cool. I just finished up an assignment for a master’s class and one of the goals was to research how school districts can close the digital divide for impoverished students. The best two strategies were allocation of funds for equipment, and professional development. The jist of it: in order to increase achievement all classrooms within a district should have the same equipment available for students and teachers. What you do sounds great, however, we also need to encourage reluctant teachers to try new things with technology.The best way is to have professional develpment opportunities that give tham the confidence to use technology in their curriculum.

By: Bev

Bev — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:56:18 +0000

Tim, nice surprise to stumble upon your blog. When I used to teach tech staff development classes and speak at conferences, I hauled a big rock around. Rocks can be used to destroy, to block, or to provide a foundation upon which remarkable structures can be built. On the rock was painted the word YES!

Good teachers recognize that they are not police, but rather architects of foundations for buildings they could not have envisioned. That vision is up to the learners, whether adult or child student.

Continue enabling, and be careful where you place your rocks!

By: Kim

Kim — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 18:31:54 +0000

I hope upon graduation I am lucky enough to work in a district with a Tech department with your views. As a future foreign language teacher, the web allows much more access to authentic materials than anything else could (aside from a trip) and limiting access will limit my students’ interest and success.

By: Jethro taylor

Jethro taylor — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:28:34 +0000

I believe that tech departments’ attitudes are largely a product of their management. If they are run (as is the case in most of the Districts I know of) by the Facilities Manager, they tend to have a “Great Firewall of China” mentality; and rather than seeing themselves as enablers, they see themselves as technology gatekeepers. It becomes their job to make sure the computers run, the networks transfer packets, and everyone who is allowed to can print. In most cases, if they could get away with it, they’d shut the Internet off completely, because it causes so much more work.

Fortunately, I work for a very progressive District with a 1-to-1 program and a technophilic board. While we are still understaffed, we are encouraged to explore new ways to help our teachers use education technology, including Web2.0 stuff. We have our own WordPress sandbox, so every single student gets a blog automagically when their network account is made (those are accessible to outside visitors, too!). We encourage students and teachers to use Youtube, Google Video, and UnitedStreaming, both as consumers, and contributors. When students abuse their freedoms (and they do!), they lose them- but on an individual basis. We try very hard not to punish everyone just because a few are foolish.

I think a huge part of the reason we have been so successful in this area is because our tech department reports to the Education Administration (Superintendent), rather than the Operations side of the business. When it’s educators rather than beancounters making the decisions, you get way better results!

By: Al

Al — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:05:57 +0000

Our department also manages to do some pretty innovative things. My tech director is very open and willing to accommodate new approaches to teaching and learning using technology. I am also fortunate to be part of a district who has the common sense to “bridge the gap” between the tech-geeks and the teachers with an integration specialist (me) who (hopefully) can act as a liaison between those who know the IT side and those who know curriculum and pedagogy.
Not just writing this to wave our flag or toot our own horn here, but my point is, there are always going to be issues with security and safety. There are always going to be issues with what we can afford and why we can’t have as much as the affluent districts on the other side of the county. At least, we have a climate of open-mindedness and the same goal – doing what’s best for our students and the community that we serve. If you can foster that in your district, you can achieve more and provide more exciting opportunities for students.

By: ITLeader

ITLeader — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:55:18 +0000

Goodness, you all are really down on your tech folks. From the other side of the coin, I hear more about the tech staff that have one person covering thousands of machines. Tech heads would LOVE to play with new stuff, but when they are answering questions like, “I read the email about the computers being shut down automatically at night to save energy cost…does that mean I have to turn it on myself in the morning?” and being pulled in 12 directions by all the things that aren’t working (or the users that refuse to take ownership for basic responsibility of the equipment), there aren’t enough hours left to play.

I agree that being an enabler is a great thing. I love to do that as well. When I have a tech-savvy teacher that wants to do something new, I do everything within my power to make that happen. But I also am realistically limited by budget, policies and federal regulations (and non tech savvy administrators). SURE we’d like to relax the filter a bit…but sometimes there are other things that prevent that. Shoot, we just went through an ordeal with an Elementary school teacher trying to do the right thing and teach kids about proper use of email. Thinking we were safest to open email internally only for these 5th graders, that’s what we did (no fear of spam, or nasty incoming email). However, when one kid started bullying another and the parents insist we pull the plug (and the Principal agreed), it was our job to pull the plug…even though it affected the 99% of those who were using the tool appropriately, and even though that was a perfect teachable moment.

By: bouwser

bouwser — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:30:01 +0000

It seems that there is a divide between the IT department in schools and the actual teaching/learning in a building. At what point does the IT department feel they should not be in the building to help the teachers teach and students learn? I feel sometimes the tech department is there just make sure that nothing goes wrong with the machine and make sure the paper is full. I know this is not the complete truth but these people should be the technology leaders. They should be finding the fun, new softwares for teachers to use in their classroom. IT departments should be just as excited as I am in a classroom full of eager students who want to do more than just use the computer as a word processor. The focus of the IT department could change so that it is more on the learning environment found in a school and less on what might or might not go wrong.

By: Mary

Mary — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:13:29 +0000

Tim,

I work in a school district very similar to the one you describe. Just last week I requested that my tech coordinator loosen the filter a bit and allow me to blog with my 4th grade classroom so that we could create a literature circle with another classroom. After his initial, body flinching reaction, he asked why I would want to do something like that. After giving about 15 good reasons why and pleading that he trust my professional judgement his response was, “I’ll think about it.” Ouch!!! Funny thing happened the next day. I got an email from him stating that he was at a conference and heard of some really good uses for blogging and maybe I’d like to try them. I guess sometimes it just has to be their idea, or so they think!