In the 1970’s two professors of planning from California published ana important paper in which they defined “tame” and “wicked” problems. While each can be challenging, the two are differentiated by the how we approach problem and judge if they have been solved. Technology problems are typically tame problems, while teaching is a wicked one. Read More
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has been law in the United States since 2000. The intent of the law is to protect the privacy and the personal information of children. In general, this is the law used by social media and other companies that restrict access to their platforms to individuals under 13 Read More
Educators are constantly reviewing what they teach. Many regulatory agencies require curriculum documents to be updated, and professional organizations update curriculum suggestions as well. IT professionals are often expected to participate in some of these efforts. Although IT professionals will not make recommendations about what should be taught, they will be asked to participate to Read More
IT professionals know the danger of using computers when logged on with an account that has administrator permissions. When logged on with an administrator account, users have access to controls to change configurations, install software, and manage other users. All of these have potential to be set improperly. Most IT professionals have two accounts; they Read More
Some folks asked me about unions and school IT jobs recently, I thought my response might be a good blog post: Schools tend to be highly unionized organizations. Often, the licensed educators in the school are members of one union (and covered by a different master contract) than non-licensed employees. Many factors affect whether an Read More
187: On Advertisements in School Another overlooked aspect of IT use in schools is students’ exposure to advertisements. Many sources of online information used in schools, including mainstream media and journalism sites, the sites of professional organizations and edited periodicals, and especially social media sites (like YouTube) are funded by advertisements. When students access these Read More
This comes from Technology in Schools: Its Not Like this in Business, the book I recently released under a Creative Commons license. When looking at information technology in schools, we can break it into five levels (see table 1). As one proceeds from “IT Systems” to “Students and Teachers Using IT for Teaching Tasks,” each Read More
One of the challenges for designing information technology for school populations is the broad range of skills that users bring to the device. When we build IT for business users, we can usually assume their skills fall within a narrow range. Consider the range of literacy and numeracy skills as well as the physical characteristics Read More
When framing a problem, we define what we believe its cause to be along with the conditions that will indicate the problem has been solved. When attempting to solve problems, we take actions to reduce its effects and to prevent it from returning. When working with IT in schools, it becomes obvious there are differences Read More
Technology is a force that exerts strong influences on society and culture. For those living within a culture its effects are so familiar they are barely perceived and thought to be a natural part of every culture or society. What we expect of people (our peers, our leaders, our children, etc.) and out institutions (schools Read More