Too Much Ed Tech Too Frequently?

The following is an RSS Feed Reader snip from the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning (http://www.educatorstechnology.com/) site encompassing but the past six days.

Your school just might be well enough funded to have implemented 1 to 1 classrooms or maybe just a legacy computer lab or two, or maybe tablet carts or four or five static tablets assigned to each classroom. Many might still be saddled with ancient slow and cumbersome desktops. (Aside note: I remember a time [the late 80's] when I lugged my "portable" 30-pound computer with two 5-1/4" floppy disk drives back and forth to work daily using a luggage carrier.) Surely whatever devices on campus, all have access to the Internet and every faculty member has a laptop, notebook or tablet device. No? Whatever the case someone or someones has the explicit, or worse, the implicit task of vetting new educational apps, websites, browser add-ons, templates, ed tech tools, hardware, and all  stuff ed tech. Considering that these 60 some educational technology "things" above are from only one website, we can be assured that every six days produces many, many more, probably thousands. Who vets, recommends, budgets and buys ed tech stuff at your institution? Is it the administrators, the teachers, the IT guys, the education-technology integrator/coordinator, the cleaning crew? Who or what group would ever even have the time to visit each website and blog then look up and read a summary about each new thing. Does anyone even care that new and fabulous ed tech stuff, eminently capable of propelling students forward by at least two grades, goes on the market every day? What criteria is used? Do the teacher-users and student-user have input to decisions?ed tech tools, hardware, and all stuff ed tech. Considering that these 60 some educational technology "things" above are from only one website, we can be assured that every six days produces many, many more, probably thousands. Who vets, recommends, budgets and buys ed tech stuff at your institution? Is it the administrators, the teachers, the IT guys, the education-technology integrator/coordinator, the cleaning crew? Who or what group would ever even have the time to visit each website and blog then look up and read a summary about each new thing. Does anyone even care that new and fabulous ed tech stuff, eminently capable of propelling students forward by at least two grades, goes on the market every day? What criteria is used? Do the teacher-users and student-user have input to decisions?

1:1 Lessons Learned from LAUSD Continue

We've all heard of the LAUSD 1:1 debacle but as the title states, "The saga continues: Report finds ongoing iPad problems at LAUSD". At a cost of $340,000, the Washington, D.C.-based American Institutes for Research conducted a review of the current 1:1 situation. They released their report on September 2. What they discovered is that little has changed and that the district continues to fail at proper planning, testing, preparation, and execution. Something I could have told them for far fewer dollars. Back in October of 2013 a guest blogger at K12 News Network published a chart that details the difference between a successful implementation and the LAUSD failure. Very telling. The questions that continue to go unanswered is, Why did LAUSD officials mess up so badly and why do they continue to do so? What is wrong at the district level?                          

 

The Changed Roles of the School/District Tech Director/Manager

Ten years ago, the guy in charge of IT had a relatively non-collaborative and straightforward job. Broadly we were responsible for the traditional management functions of planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Specifically we oversaw the procurement, installation and repair of hardware and software, the network and servers. We seldom interfaced with faculty and staff other than to take direction, respond to service requests or request funding. Given the hundreds of tasks involved in successfully performing those functions, we were busy and, if we were lucky enough to have them, our staffs were busy.

The truth has changed. What we do less of and what we do more of, more or less cancels each other out. We still are very, very busy. In most institutions, we are well beyond integrating technology into our classrooms (provisioning with operable computers and interactive whiteboards). A major change, the main goal of the modern IT director/manager, is to facilitate (read "manage") the successful integration of technology into the curriculum, instructional units, lesson plans and learning activities. The ideal approach is through coaching/mentoring, professional development and learning communities. A great discussion about these approaches is at the Center for Public Education website. I couldn't say it better but I will emphasize that we're not talking about traditional workshop-based professional development, which as been shown by numerous studies to be ineffective. Please read the article.

Other affective truths are the changes (I hesitate to use "advancements"--I'll wait for validated results) in educational technology, the students, and pedagogies including:  the shift toward mobile technologies; cloud computing (SaaS -software as a service; PaaS-platform as a service; and IaaS-infrastructure as a service); all students are now "digital natives", many being technologically sophisticated; open source software; the need to ensure that students remain familiar with technologies that they might be using after school; learning management systems (LMS) (e.g. Moodle); online courses (MOOC); staying ahead of the available apps and software to support each content area; one-on-one computing in the classroom; bring your own device (BYOD); the flipped classroom; blended learning; learning partnerships; game enhanced learning; project-based learning; peer teaching; brain-based learning; differentiated instruction; just-in-time teaching; deep learning (whatever that is); etc.

Educational technology changes are accompanied by fear and operational and resource problems: privacy, security, safety, available band width, available funding, qualified technicians, committed administrators and board members, and push back to name a few. The technology manager/director must become an expert in change management and an integral part of the change planning and execution team. As technology becomes more infused into administrative and management functions, the curriculum, instructional units, lesson plans and learning activities, the more involved the educational technologist should be.

The Various Aspects of Educational Technology Support & Integration

There was a time when performing as a Director of Information Technology I realized that educational technology support demands could and should be categorized so as to better prioritize, organize and focus technology staff and efforts. I came up with four distinct categories and a subcategory: 1-the interactive education learning process; 2-the unilateral learning process; 3-technology as a separate content area; and 4-school administration and management. Faculty/staff technology profession development is a subcategory integral of the four categories. These can be readily integrated into the ITIL framework. Note that the focus, while on the institution, does not address the constant back room support required to keep the systems running smoothly.

Faculty/staff technology professional development. I believe that if anything has held back classroom/curriculum technology integration, student self-directed learning and efficient use of school administration and learning management software, it is the insufficiency of technology professional development.  I would encourage establishment of a technology professional development program that took into account the personal situations, learning styles and instructional needs of each teacher/staff member and one that included a teacher/staff/administrator individual learning plan agreement consistent with the school’s mission, goals, objectives and budgetary constraints while maximizing use of internal expertise (technologists and teacher/staff-technology leaders from within teacher learning communities and staff offices). Though research has shown that traditional, workshop-based professional development is ineffective, I would not hesitate to lobby the administration, board and community for additional funding to take advantage of select commercial programs that have a proven track record. A bit of aside gripe coming. Remember when Microsoft Office switched from the traditional menu interface to the "ribbon"? Or when your administrators pushed to change out the teachers' desktops for laptops? Or when the Board decided to implement a one-to-one computing program in the next school year? Yep, the techies were expected to develop change management skills overnight, design appropriate instructional sessions and execute.

Given finite technology resources, the interactive learning process should be the highest priority. Basically, it's all about integrating (infusing, if you must) technology into the teaching-learning dynamic within the classroom. Enough has been written and said by others and me in previous blogs. For now, let's just say that success in this category lies at the confluence of curricular content, constructivist pedagogies, and technology—that the interoperability of these three elements will foster engaged learning and encourage students to accept accountability and responsibility for their own education. Technology support in this category is on ensuring that classroom hardware is available when needed and operates reliably, that required software and apps are installed and functioning properly and that each classroom has reliable access to the network and the Internet. Each classroom should have a primary and alternate method of rapidly reporting issues to the technology department.

More and more emphasis is being placed on the unilateral learning process. This learning process can be defined as one wherein students without the supervision or oversite of, or immediate interaction with, a teacher, school staff member or another student use a digital device while performing learning tasks. Homework is the most common, traditional example. The flipped classroom, one-to-one computing programs and BYOD efforts are placing more emphasis on student self-learning. Whether or not these initiatives are enhancing or will enhance student learning, the tech department is obligated to ensure that the system fully supports the process 24/7. Coming into play here are various compartmentalized servers, interoperative operating system platforms, security and backups, remote access, acceptable use agreements and policies, safety, policies and procedures and I'm sure many more that do not come to mind readily. If students are expected to perform online research, analysis, synthesis, etc. from their own or family computers and the computer or their Internet is not functioning, what then? What if they don't even have access to a computer outside of school? How does the institution accommodate them? If the school provides them, how does a tech department maintain as many as 2,000 tablets? The questions of expense and support are many and complex. If such programs are effective, I believe that the educational gap between the haves and have-nots will continue to grow.

The third category and priority, technology as a separate subject area, seems to have declined in popularity in K-12 schools. The decline in great part is due to perceived student familiarity with common use hardware and software from early ages. At the same time, STEM is being pushed at all levels. And surprisingly, the following is from the Business Insider, September 11, 2014: "This semester, a record-breaking 818 Harvard students — nearly 12% of the entire college — enrolled in one popular class, reports The Crimson. The course, Computer Science 50: "Introduction to Computer Science I" (CS50), pulled in 100 more students than the 700 that signed up last fall, making it the single largest class in the course's 30-year history, as well as the biggest class at Harvard College this semester." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-course-at-harvard-2014-9#ixzz3YMjsSDCt The course has little to do about hardware, instead focusing on such topics as algorithms, software engineering, and web development.  A reasonable prediction is that the success at the higher education level will shortly begin filtering down to at least the high school level. Support for technology courses is very similar to that for the interactive learning process, with the important exception of the addition of a highly technologically proficient teachers. Teacher content expertise and hands-on, project-based learning rules!

Lastly, on the priority scale is school administration and management support. Why last? Simply, it is not as close to the learning process nor nearly as time-sensitive. However, support is more complex involving uncommon software applications such as Blackbaud's suite of applications, one or more of the hundreds of school management, bookkeeping/accounting, curriculum management and mapping, lesson planning, grade book, report card and assessment software packages. Keeping these applications repaired and up-to-date along with the incumbent database and database server administration and management  (both back room and user) takes a huge slice of time, efforts, and budget from the tech department's resources. Not to mention the training required that needs to be scheduled and performed. Sure to take a big chunk out of the tech budget.

What are the desirable personal and professional characteristics of a good manager/supervisor?

A good manager is a manager in the traditional sense:  performs the planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling functions in an acceptable and safe manner.  However, an “excellent” manager is a manager and an excellent leader.  Successful leaders are creative visionaries who develop and pursue goals, objectives and values in a collaborative, communicative, transparent, motivational and cooperative manner while demonstrating that they sincerely care about and respect the stakeholders.  An excellent leader realizes that mission accomplishment and valuing and taking care of people are not a zero sum game but are interdependent.  Leaders can readily extrapolate operational objectives from strategic missions and goals and facilitate accomplishment.  Being visionaries, leaders are not afraid to take calculated risks.  A good manager is reactive; an excellent manager is proactive.  Manager-leaders are experts in their field, lead by example, are team players as well as team leaders and are capable of applying differing leadership styles depending on the nature and urgency of the situation.

Organizational Development (OD) – a Systems View

The traditional view or organizational development is a linear approach: (1) symptom analysis (identification of one or more dysfunctions that inhibit effectiveness); (2) diagnose the dysfunction(s) (determine the cause(s) of the dysfunction(s)); (3) intervene to correct the dysfunction(s); and (4) check to see that the dysfunction(s) are gone and effectiveness enhanced. This is, of course, a simplistic condensation of a rather complex process derived from the traditional standard definition of OD developed by Richard Beckhard in his 1969 book, Organizational Development Strategies and Models, wherein he states, “Organization Development is an effort (1) planned, (2) organization-wide, and (3) managed from the top, to (4) increase organization effectiveness and health through (5) planned interventions in the organization's "processes," using behavioral-science knowledge”. In other words the objective was to find and fix non-productive issues.

In the years preceding 1969 and probably well into the 1970s, most organizations were relatively static. Systems were fairly well-defined—hierarchical structures established, roles enumerated, employment/union contracts agreed upon; processes and procedures published, controls in place—it was a tidy world. The OD practitioner/stakeholder team’s objective was to find the dysfunctions negatively affecting effectiveness and eliminate them through implementation of change with minimum operational disruption, management discomfort and employee dissatisfaction.

Despite recognition that modern dynamic organizations are of ambiguous structure; competing in a volatile world-wide market subject to various and numerous often conflicting and changing laws and regulations; made up of self-defining, self-regulating and diverse employee teams whose members may be physically separated; chasing ever-changing technologies; training and retraining employees at an exponential rate caused by dysfunction turnovers; dealing with greater community consciousness; and dealing less with unionization and rigidly defined job descriptions, OD practitioners have yet to settle on a new coherent definition of OD. Rapid and frequent change in modern organizations is their defining nature. However, the nature of change itself has not changed. Change continues to be rife with stress and anxieties and in this environment the linear approach to OD will only result in greater frustration. As the initial dysfunctions are in the process of being corrected a plethora of old symptoms will come to light and new ones identified. Obviously, dissecting and fixing piecemeal “ain’t gonna git it.” It is generally agreed within the field that a system-wide or holistic approach need be taken and a few new definitions have been offered:

“Organization Development is the attempt to influence the members of an organization to expand their candidness with each other about their views of the organization and their experience in it, and to take greater responsibility for their own actions as organization members. The assumption behind OD is that when people pursue both of these objectives simultaneously, they are likely to discover new ways of working together that they experience as more effective for achieving their own and their shared (organizational) goals. And that when this does not happen, such activity helps them to understand why and to make meaningful choices about what to do in light of this understanding.”
-- Neilsen, “Becoming an OD Practitioner”, Englewood Cliffs, CA: Prentice-Hall, 1984, pp. 2-3.

"Organization development is a system-wide application of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development and reinforcement of organizational strategies, structures, and processes for improving an organization's effectiveness."
-- Cummings and Worley, "Organization Development and Change", Sixth Edition, South-Western Publishing, 1997, p.2.

"Organization Development is a body of knowledge and practice that enhances organizational performance and individual development, viewing the organization as a complex system of systems that exist within a larger system, each of which has its own attributes and degrees of alignment. OD interventions in these systems are inclusive methodologies and approaches to strategic planning, organization design, leadership development, change management, performance management, coaching, diversity, and work/life balance."
-- Matt Minahan, MM & Associates, Silver Spring, Maryland

Explicit in all three definitions are that the goal is enhanced performance/effectiveness and that organizations must be viewed in the whole as organic systems. Implicit in the definitions is the absolute need for authentic and candid collaboration by all team members throughout the entire process. It seems that most practitioners agree, probably more by default than by studied experimentation, research and deliberation that the same in-practice processes apply to a systems approach as they did under older OD theories.

1. Contract with and gain commitment from key personnel


2. Establish the change team


3. Analyze systems to identify dysfunctions and/or unmet goals/objects of the systems


4. Determine likely causes of systems dysfunctions


5. Identify all the parts of the system that are negatively and positively affected by the dysfunctions


6. Organize additional change teams as needed; establish inter-team collaboration


7. Identify methodologies (as much as I detest the term, “interventions” if you will) designed to improve effectiveness of the organization and performance of its employees


8. Apply consensually selected multi-team methodologies to improve effectiveness while building internal ability to create sustainable change


9. Evaluate the effectiveness of the changes on the entire system, reinforce, recycle as needed

The primary difference is the recognition that any change to any one part of a system affects the other parts: people; culture; cliques; emotions; performance; structures (formal and informal); norms; values; attitudes; lines of communication; goals; objectives; standards; processes; products; structure; training; roles; other teams; etc. Such recognition will perforce engender system wide effectiveness and performance evaluations which will likely identify additional dysfunctions, dysfunctions even brought about by previous or ongoing changes.

Basic Functions of Management/Leadership

This is basically for my own edification and reminder reference as I have found that, over a very long career in diverse industries, these principles still hold. These are management tasks that must be performed to a more or lesser degree in all organizations. How a manager accomplishes the tasks is in the realm of management theory, a body of study and knowledge that continually evolves. The most recent trend in management theory seems to be a combination of customer/employee oriented factors involving coordination, communication and collaboration at the core (not unlike recent education trends) - mostly common sense. The race to develop adopted catch-phases that sell books might be more the driving force behind the theories than is the advancement of theory and practices. Some examples from recent books: "radical management"; "connected and engaged organization"; The Power of Pull; The Elastic Enterprise; "new management paradigm"; The Connected Company; and many others. This for another blog?

•  Planning (operational [tactical] and strategic):
  
  
  
  • Define where the organization is, identify a future ideal state then map how the company will move toward that future state.
  
  
  •  Outcomes:
    
    
    
    1. Ideal organizational vision, identity, culture, personality.
    
    
    2. Anticipated external environment (economy, government, etc.).
    
    
    3. Tactics and strategies.
    
    
    4. Timetable.
    
    
    5. Mission, goals and objectives.
    
    
    6. Resources needed.
    
    
    7. Marketing plan.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


•  Organizing:
  
  
  
  • Organize resources (human and material) to accomplish mission, goals and objectives.
  
  
  • Outcomes:
    
    
    
    1. Organizational chart.
       
       
       
       1. Spans of control.
       
       
       2. Chain of command.
       
       
       3. Lines of authority.
       
       
       
       
    
    
    2. Departmentalization.
    
    
    3. Position descriptions.
       
       
       
       1. Duties and responsibilities.
       
       
       2. Detailed tasks, conditions and standards.
       
       
       3. Position authority.
       
       
       4. Delegation of authority to include hiring, firing, supervising, disciplining, ordering, purchasing, compensatory time, etc.
       
       
       
       
    
    
    4. Policies, processes, procedures, systems and rules.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• Leading (Directing) toward mission, goal, objective and task achievement:
  
  
  
  • Decision making
  
  
  • Motivating
  
  
  • Rewarding
  
  
  • Disciplining
  
  
  • Compensating
  
  
  • Communicating/informing
  
  
  • Supervising
  
  
  • Supporting
  
  
  • Training, educating and orienting
  
  
  • Evaluating
  
  
  • Consistency
  
  
  
  


•  Staffing:
  
  
  
  • Position analysis
  
  
  • Human resource inventory
  
  
  • Identification of position skills, knowledges and abilities
  
  
  • Recruiting
  
  
  • Testing and interviewing
  
  
  • Hiring, promoting, transferring, adjusting pay, terminating
  
  
  • Training, educating and orienting
  
  
  • Evaluating
  
  
  • Consistency
  
  
  
  


• Controlling:
  
  
  
  • Assigning, evaluating, and regulating resources on an ongoing basis to accomplish the organization's goals:
    
    
    
    1. Measuring performance against position descriptions and standards.
    
    
    2. Evaluating and measuring compliance and progress with and regulating plans, policies, processes, procedures, systems, rules, regulations, ordinances, laws, project drawings, specifications and other contract documents and budgets.
    
    
    3. Ensuring that organizational activities are consistent, effective and efficient.
    
    
    4. Soliciting customer, vendor and employee feedback.
    
    
    5. Making necessary changes and taking corrective actions as needed in response to outcomes of the first four principles above.
    
    
    6. Managing change.