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May 1, 1997
A Modest Proposal:
On-Site Technology Administrators
by Mike Thompson
Fairfield Junior High School was built
to the latest specifications: fiber-optic backbone, three
computer labs, a computer on every teacher's desk, and
all classrooms wired for future computer banks. We mark
roll electronically, and bubble sheets are a thing of the
past. Fairfield is the model for other schools in the
district that are installing computer systems, and it
seems that all is well in our technological domain. But
it's not.
When I suggested we could load a CD-ROM
version of the entire Oxford English Dictionary into our
writing labs for a fraction the cost of buying more of
those painfully incomplete student dictionaries, I was
nearly defenestrated (try finding that word in one of
those student dictionaries!) by more traditional members
of the English department. Some teachers refused to enter
grades into the computer until it was mandated from
above. Only recently have many of my colleagues attempted
to visit the Internet, despite the fact that we have had
access for two years.
Because I had recently purchased a
computer and had blabbed about how much fun I was having
with it, I was deemed the school's "Web
Wanderer." I didn't initially understand the
unwillingness of my colleagues to use these resources,
but in my capacity as "The Internet Guy," I
have discovered why technology isn't used to full
advantage in schools, and I learned to sympathize with
those who are frequently criticized as being out of touch
(those Karen Ferrell calls Coral Reefs in her article "Hooking Teachers on
Technology: Finding the Right Bait") because
they don't put much stock in computers.
The fundamental problem with technology
in education is that public schools lack the resources
and personnel to implement, maintain, and utilize
technology to full advantage. I propose a new position be
created in schools that are trying to implement
technology: the on-site technology specialist. As more
schools depend ever more heavily upon computers, on-site
specialists who have no other function than to maintain
the technology and enable teachers to make the most of it
will become a necessity.
We have at our school people I consider
computer experts who could solve many of the problems we
encounter, but these people are not actually being paid
to be system caretakers. One of them runs the media
center and the copy room, another is the assistant
principal. Two others teach six classes a day. These
people simply don't have time, nor are they being paid,
to fix the glitches in the system. Consequently, we have
more down time than we should, we have a lot of available
technology that is not used, and many good teachers don't
trust the technology enough to spend time trying to
implement it.
The duties of a full-time technology
specialist could include the following:
1) Keeping the system (hardware) up and running all the
time.
2) Staying abreast of the latest technology and software
and finding ways to bring useful new innovations to the
school.
3) Training teachers individually how to use the
technology that suits their needs.
I hear the cries now: "We can't
afford an on-site manager at all 67 schools in the
district! We're already paying over 3000 teachers and
support staff just to meet the needs of our 60,000
students! Once we get this thing working, all the little
problems will go away and we can really jump on this
technology thing! Be patient! We'll make it work."
But it won't work as effectively as it should on a
shoestring budget because the labor required for the
success of technology projects will fall only on the
willing shoulders of those computer superstars whose
articles already fill the virtual pages of this magazine.
Furthermore, technology is changing and improving at such
a pace that no one except a specialist can stay abreast
of it all. In order for technology to be as useful as it
is hailed to be, average teachers with no special
training should be able to implement it without having to
spend hundreds of hours figuring out how it works.
Presently, most schools barely have the means to keep the
system up and running smoothly on a day-to-day basis, to
say nothing of all the available technology that isn't
being used.
Technology is temperamental
President Clinton, in his 1997 State of
the Union address, suggested that every child should be
able to access the Internet from school, and the money he
wants to spend on this is to equip the schools with the
technology. But having computers doesn't mean that
everyone will be able to use them, especially if
they are off-line so much that no one trusts them to work
when they're needed.
"Teachers, please log off the
administration file server immediately. Do not attempt to
sign on again until we give the okay. Thank you."
Some variation of that announcement has haunted Fairfield
at least once a week since we opened our doors. The more
we depend on computers, the more fully we understand how
important it is that the system be up and running all the
time. The inconvenience of being unable to mark
attendance or enter grades is frustrating in small doses.
This, coupled with teachers not being able to access word
processing, the Internet, CD-ROMs, and countless other
programs that run from the main fileserver, creates
anger, indignation, and righteous skepticism. Part of the
reason some of my colleagues have been slow to jump on
the technology bandwagon is that the wagon is so often
sunk in the mud of technological glitches.
Technology is temperamental. There are
computer specialists at the district offices who
troubleshoot for us, but it takes a while for them to get
to our building. (Technology is temperamental in all the
other schools too.) The longer teachers are deprived of
the hailed technology that will make their lives so much
easier, the less likely they are to buy into it with the
passion the superintendent, the governor, and the
President so desire.
Teachers need one-on-one help
Calliene is a great Spanish teacher.
She also happens to be the most technophobic member of
our faculty. I recently volunteered a preparation day,
which I should have spent planning lessons for my eighth
graders, during which I sat for an hour with Calliene and
talked her through an Internet search for e-mail keypals
for her third-year Spanish students. She came into the
session skeptical and scared but left excited, and she
scheduled the lab for the following week, intending to
bring her classes in to find Spanish-speaking keypals in
Spanish-speaking countries. I felt successful in my job
as a trainer because I saw her attitude towards the
technology change when she saw what it could do for her.
The following Wednesday, I was in the
middle of a lesson on persuasive writing when Calliene
burst into my room, near tears. "The computers
aren't working!" she cried. I followed her to the
lab, thinking that Calliene had just forgotten one of the
steps for logging onto the Internet, but when I arrived,
I discovered that the entire file server was off-line
indefinitely. Not being a computer expert, I could not
help Calliene, nor could anyone else who was available
during the forty-five minutes her class sat in front of
dark computer screens. Calliene has yet to take her
classes back to the computer lab. Had there been an
on-site specialist there to solve the problem before the
classes arrived in the lab, a day of instruction would
have been saved, and Calliene would have been much more
willing to use available technology.
The way we master things is by doing
them, playing with them, experimenting until we become
confident. But asking a teacher who already has a full
schedule for a few more hours to search around on the
Internet for what may or may not prove helpful isn't
going to work. And teachers should not have to master
technology in order for it to be useful. Otherwise it
will never be used to full advantage, because there are
some teachers who will never try to master it. However,
if teachers could go to an in-house specialist and say,
"I need to find out how to do ________," or,
"I need some Internet sites that deal with
_________," and that person could spend the time to
get everything together, teachers would be much more
willing to use the technology that is available. An
on-site specialist would make technology practical even
for those who haven't had the time or desire to learn
about it, and this is something general district or state
in-service sessions cannot do.
Part of the problem with the general
district in-service class is that it assumes that all
those who attend are equally able and willing to use
technology. In-service classes, workshops, and training
sessions are fine as far as they go, but you can't train
every person (even the willing ones) to be a system
operator. Our district offers an abundance of in-service
classes at the district technology center, and there is
no question that those classes are valuable for those who
attend. But teachers' calendars are already too full. The
day-to-day duties of running a classroom, grading papers,
talking to parents, and playing a hundred roles to as
many different kids is more than a full-time job. Is it
any wonder then that some teachers groan when a forced
faculty training is announced, or when people are
recruited against their will to attend in-service
sessions? This is where an on-site technology
administrator could help.
Furthermore, another reason many
teachers are hesitant to implement technology is that
much of what they are taught in training sessions does
not apply to what they need in their classes. It might
make sense for math teachers to know how to run The
Cruncher, and it is appropriate to train them to do so,
but English teachers might be better off looking at a
CD-ROM of the complete works of Shakespeare. It all boils
down to teachers asking, "How can I use this in my
class?"
General training sessions are
hit-and-miss, sometimes useful, others not. An on-site
specialist could train teachers based on their needs.
Each teacher could begin with a question or a problem to
be solved, much as I tell my students to do before we use
the Internet for research: "You can't find the
answer until you know the question." Then the
on-site specialist could cater the training to the
teacher. Because this specialist works in the school, it
would not be unreasonable even to train teachers
individually, literally making sure that each teacher
gets exactly the help needed, and this could be done
without requiring teachers to miss days of school for
training sessions or spend weekends and evenings going to
in-service classes. Hence, an on-site specialist would
make it possible for all teachers to effectively use all
the available technology. This isn't happening now, and
technology is outpricing its usefulness in many schools.
Given the fact that the technology itself is so
expensive, it isn't unreasonable to hire a person to
manage it and train the rest of us to make it work.
Qualifications of the technology
specialist
As I've suggested, much of technology
in schools has nothing to do with teaching. Keeping the
system running, the technology available, and the faculty
up-to-date does not require a person with a teaching
certificate.
The person in charge of the technology
should not be someone who was hired as a classroom
teacher because then the tendency is to give him or her
classes to teach, which makes it impossible to do all the
things that I suggest. Previous experience in teaching,
however, would be helpful when it comes to working with
teachers and understanding what they need. Anyone hired
to work with teachers should have an appreciation for the
art and science of pedagogy. My proposed on-site
specialist would be especially helpful to teachers on
days spent in the computer lab doing Internet research,
running programs like Power Point and Cruncher, or just
helping some of us figure out where the document went
after it disappeared off the screen. This is a full-time
job, not the part-time responsibility of a history
teacher who likes to play with computers in her or his
spare time.
The on-site administrator I propose
should not be a person who spends the entire day in the
confines of his/her office, lit only by the glow of
computer terminals and spouting technojargon to scare
away teachers who need help. She or he should devote a
portion of the day to interacting with teachers, helping
them solve technological problems and find answers to
their questions by going to their classrooms and finding
out what those questions are.
Another of the things that turns many
teachers away from technology is that it is often a
solitary pursuit. You learned most of what you know
because you sat alone in front of the computer for hours
and tried everything you could think of. A technology
administrator puts a live human being (who knows the
answers and has no other responsibility but to help)
between the hesitant teacher and the machine.
Because I am the webmaster of Fairfield's
home page (a job for which I do not receive regular
payment), I frequently get e-mail lists of 12,000
Internet sites for those who want to get a grant, find a
key pal, join in a world-wide Internet project, or
conference with other teachers. Who has time to read it
all? I delete most of it without reading it because I
feel guilty just forwarding it to someone else the way it
was forwarded to me. An on-site administrator could not
only become the school webmaster, but sift through all
the offers and educational opportunities that are
available and direct them to the appropriate people. He
or she could keep a list of Internet bookmarks that prove
useful and share them with teachers.
Paying the bill
My concern here is to argue for the
creation of a technology specialist position, but I must
also inject a final caveat regarding how schools pay for
it. Because the on-site administrator is not hired as a
classroom teacher, money to pay the person should not
come from the fund used to pay teachers. With or without
computers, schools always need teachers. And I know the
tendency of districts with crowded classes: make everyone
a teacher. My district (in Utah) has the largest class
sizes in the nation, and maybe because of that I am
oversensitive, but it all goes back to my initial point
about schools: the students come regardless of the status
of the technology. We need teachers to be teachers, and
we need as many good ones as we can afford. The money to
pay a technology administrator should come from a
separate account; the technology fund seems appropriate,
as many schools already pay for much more of it than they
actually use.
By handing schools technology and
encouraging (ordering) teachers to use it, school boards
and governments have in effect given teachers part-time
jobs in addition to the full-time teaching positions they
already have. It's fine if you don't mind only having a
fraction of the faculty using the available technology,
but that seems a bigger waste of money than hiring a
specialist who could painlessly bring everyone into the
technological fold. An on-site administrator to handle
all this necessary non-teaching would save schools a lot
of time and money. As school boards and politicians
witness the price of keeping schools technologically
current, I hope they make room the in technology budgets
to care for the hardware investments that they so proudly
hail.
E-mail: Mike Thompson
Fairfield's
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