What makes a good edsysad?
After reading through the comments to David Warwick’s “Teacher Technology Rant”, I notice that system administrators were being listed as one of the prime reasons for teachers. I think that it is a valid observation and speaks to a growing problem in educational IT.
In many instances, educational IT managers have come from the business world. Business is about efficiency and keeping technology focused on making profits. Education is a messy affair and our product is students with the ability to think (or at least it should be). Business IT is about the box and educational IT is about the learning. Basically, educational IT and business IT do not share the same mindset.
Of course, this idea is not new. I think I first saw something along these lines at an Apple training workshop. The idea was along the lines that business and educational IT share the need for scalability, security, and reliability, but educational IT needs flexibility unheard of in the business world. It needs to be able to take risks.
I think that teachers need to be given the training and education to manage more IT. We need folks that are out on the fringe and in the trenches helping make the IT decisions. A centralized person or department, depending on the size of the school district, should be developing capacity, security, and reliability. However, there should be people at every site who can manage and adjust to meet teacher needs.