I’ve seen the requests from many desktop support teams: “Before you add technology to grants, please include us in your planning.” I understand their rationale. They are responsible for installing, configuring, and managing it. It must integrate with existing systems and be reliable, robust, and secure. I would be sensitive to their requests and I Read More
Category: Edtech for IT
A Story of Updating School IT
The candidate for a vacant technology coordinator position, that filled the role of CIO but also spent a good deal of time sharing the work of technicians during high-demand times. When asked, “How would you respond to the teacher who returned from a conference and asked for help configuring systems to use a tool they Read More
The Challenge of Passwords in Schools
When upgrading the computers in a school that enrolled students in grades K-12, the new technology coordinator did not change the minimum complexity requirements of passwords for the organizational units containing student users. When they first logged on to computers, they were prompted to change their passwords and were met with the complexity requirements. Students in the Read More
IT Systems: Appropriate, Proper, and Reasonable
My blog has frequent posts with different takes on the three aspects of sound IT design within organizations. This post is a version of a summary of my ideas I prepared for a group of newly hired leaders. For IT to support efficient and effective operations, it must be appropriately designed so that it meets Read More
Elevator Pitch: Technology Acceptance
For several decades, several variations of the technology acceptance model have been used to explain and predict the use of technology by individuals and within organizations. In general, when users perceive IT to be easy to use, effective for their tasks, and similar to that used by others; they are more likely to use it Read More
IT Policies and Procedures for Different Users
Protocols and practices are ostensibly objective. The same rules apply to all users and, especially those that are controlled by technology are applied with precision. The reality in schools, however, is that not all users have similar capabilities and some protocols and practices appropriate for one group of users may not be appropriate for others. Read More
IT Policies and Procedures
The policies that guide the definition of IT-related protocols and procedures are also affected by rules that regulate school operations. Because many IT users are children, and much of the data collected and stored by schools are about children, school and IT leaders are obligated to conform to certain laws and regulations that vary by Read More
Web 2.0 & Privacy
Teachers are always in search of lessons, units, and activities that will help them teach. In the decades since web 2.0 tools arrived on the world wide web, teachers have been able to (for example) create online quizzes and make them available to students; after they take the quizzes, teachers can then check their progress. Read More
Elevator Pitch on Data Security
Hackers are individuals or groups who try to gain access to others’ computers. Phishers are individuals and groups who try to trick users into giving them access to a computer system. Both hackers and phishers are generally after either computing capacity or data. In some cases, they want to use our computers for nefarious purposes, Read More
On Collaboration in Decision making
To minimize the threats of incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the work done by others, effective IT decision-making in schools requires the collaboration of individuals who approach them from very different perspectives, and it is unusual to find single individuals who have expertise in more than one of these perspectives. When designing and redesigning IT Read More