When describing the IT systems they build and manage, IT professionals use three words to describe their systems (or at least they try to build systems that can be described with these three): Reliable systems are available whenever users need them. Internet services providers, web hosting companies, and similar network vendors will describe their “up Read More
Category: Leadership
What Larry Cuban Said About Technology is (Discouragingly) Still Accurate
The computer technologies introduced to schools in the last quarter of the 20th century were part of a long parade of electronic information technologies that were introduced first into the popular culture and then into education throughout the 20th century. In 1986, Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford University, reviewed the history of Read More
Edtech for Edleaders: Whom to Hire- CIO
It is only recently that educational organizations have adopted the practice of using “c-level” title for those in management positions. Chief financial officers (CFO) manage the business operations of schools and chief academic officers (CAO) are responsible for all aspects of teaching and learning within schools; individuals in these roles report to the chief executive Read More
Edtech for Edleaders: Capacity of Computing Devices
Teaching and learning requires students access and consume information, analyze and manipulate it, and create and disseminate it. Some educationally relevant information tasks, such as consuming text-based web sites (e.g. Wikipedia) and composing text (e.g. writing research papers) require little computing capacity; the rate of data creation is a small, the necessary processing power is Read More
The Problem with Data
Data is atopic that has been addressed on this blog previously: Being Data Driven is Nothing to Brag About Data versus Evidence If you read those posts, it is going to become clear that I am not a fan of the fascination educators have developed for data. It can be a part of how we Read More
Edtech for Edleaders: Routing & Switching
For networks to function, packets of information must make it to the correct destination (to the correct IP address). This depends on accurate addressing and also on effective routing. As the name suggests, a routing is the network function in which packets are sent via a route to their destination. Routing occurs between the LAN Read More
Edtech for Edleaders: What Computers Do
We are all amazed at the power of computers. They can do so much that humans cannot… they extend our cognitive abilities… they can be leveraged for so many purposes. Or at least that is the narrative that surrounds computers and digital devices, but computers really can do only a few things well. By recognizing Read More
Edtech for Edleaders: LMS Options
When school and technology leaders decide their students and teachers have “outgrown” the simple online classrooms provided for free by various providers, they have two decisions to make, and each is a choice between two choices. The first choice is “Which platform shall we install?” Of course, there are far more than two learning management Read More
Evidence and Design
When I was studying biology as an undergraduate, a students asked the physiology about Daltons, the unit used to measure the size of large molecules such as proteins. The professor was so used to using the term, he had to look up the definition so he could explain it to the 250 or so students Read More
Reflexivity: Teachers and Technology
In a previous post, I presented reflexivity as a phenomenon that we can observe in schools. The concept is grounded in the mutual feedback and feedforward influences that exist between humans and the technologies they use (especially the information technologies they use). Reflexivity can be extended to other observations in schools as well. For example, Read More