In locations where computers, laptops, the Internet, handhelds, and related devices have penetrated into the consumer market, ICT has become a transparent part of life making it difficult to perceive its strong sociocultural influences. From inside one of those cultures, we hardly recognize the extent to which ICT changes how businesses buy and sell, performers Read More
Category: Technology Planning
#edtech for #edleaders: Cloud Computing
“Cloud computing” is the vernacular term for computing services that are provided via a World Wide Web interface. As mobile devices have become more popular, cloud computing has become popular as well. Despite the impressive computing capacity that is available in mobile devices, they have less capacity than a laptop or desktop computer with a Read More
Ensuring Ease of Use of #edtech
The selection of technology can be a wicked problem for a community. The devices or software available are likely to have some features that are needed but are underdeveloped in the available tools, while other features that are less important will be highly developed. As a result, a poor technology selection can leave some important Read More
Planning and Goals
A short excerpt of a school leader’s comments on goals and the valuable planning methods she had discovered. All of the leaders articulated the expectation that they follow prescribed planning methods. Carol indicated the expectation had been formalized in her school district. “Once the state department of education started taking about SMART goals, we were Read More
Diversity of Computing
97: Diversity of Computing In recent years, education (especially K-12 schools) have adopted Google Suite and Chromebooks is serious way. I understand that… these devices are inexpensive and easy to manage and allow the difficult work of managing network operating systems to be “outsourced.” I do think this is being adopted with little skepticism, reflection, Read More
A View of Technology
Historians of technology recognize the collection of human technologies includes both hard technologies and soft technologies. Hard technologies include the artifacts—from stone axes to automobiles to computers—that humans have built and that can be held and manipulated. Soft technologies include those practices—from language to banking to computer software—that function as technologies but that cannot actually Read More
Is Your Data Similar to Research?
“Data driven” or “evidence driven” (as they like to call themselves now) educators and leaders have always sought to co-opt the authority of research. It seems, however, that these leaders and educators lack a consistent and sophisticated understanding of research, and this leads them to use suspect data to support dubious conclusions. A few years Read More
What Leaders say about Iterative Design
I recently worked with some education leaders to design some educational technology projects that were organized around educational design research. Some of their reflections after we finished give us insight into the workflow of leaders. Rachel (one of the leaders) made observations of the differences between the planning that was commonly expected to be followed Read More
#edtech for #edleaders: Some IT Network Vocabulary
The adjectives “robust” and “reliable” are used to describe IT networks. Robust describes the capacity of the network to connect users and provided them with the network information each request in a timely manner. A robust network will allow many users in a classroom to connect with little delay, and there will be little latency Read More
Shared Computing Resources in Schools
While computer rooms have largely fallen out of favor in schools (they were perceived to the removing computing from the classroom where most learning occurs), they continue to be maintained on many schools. As more diverse computing devices have emerged, computer rooms have become more important for providing capacity for specialized purposes that require sophisticated Read More