i remember now the value of constant movement. It allows one the illusion of progress without actual change. As an ed-tech administrator, I live with these questions:

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• What could I have done differently to move my district towards increased technology use?
• What are the fundamental challenges that keep me from achieving my stated goal?
• What should my stated goal or objective be if technology integration isn’t possible in today’s K-12 environment and I lack the staff needed to impact every campus?
• How do I focus the school district’s goals to include technology at a deep level, rather than just technology for technology’s sake?
• How do I build capacity to ensure a school’s plans or goals are “good” ones? What’s “good?”
• How do I deal with the lack of knowledge and therefore leadership that comes from other district administrators where technology is concerned?

I’m not sure I’m even asking the right questions but I’m grateful to the challenges shared. I do know that I have to dig deeper, to find the uncomfortable questions that my mind is sliding over, ignoring for self-preservation. Only by trying to answer those questions will I understand the real problem(s). In my reading over the last few days, I’ve seen the following:

For most schools technology integration is optional. So I am supporting an optional program. I know it’s been said before but: As long as teachers have the option to integrate technology, some will opt not to. Since computers first started showing up in schools it was optional. Some teachers used the computer labs others didn’t. I think we set a standard why back when of technology being optional. Now we are faced with the reality that as a system, education views technology integration as optional.
Source: Jeff Utecht, The Thinking Stick

Optional technology use? We are supporting a dream, a vision that was popularized by vendors, pundits, and high priced keynote speakers. We’re still in search of the high tech, high touch. The reality? The reality is that schools don’t see technology as optional. Rather, it is irrelevant…whether the laminating machine works is a more relevant concern. Maybe that’s splitting hairs, but I see irrelevant as much worse than optional. Optional implies that technology might be used if the teacher chooses, that it has some worth. Irrelevant says that there is no worth, whether you choose to use it or not. I’m often fearful that the best I can do seldom impacts what happens in the classroom.

I want to grapple with these questions, I want someone to pick at the scabs and rip them off, to dig into the guts of the turkey, fighting off the revulsion, and doing what needs to be done. I’m almost there. When Scott writes the following, I realize that I am this person he’s describing:

Here’s the bad news: with the exception of the assistant superintendents and/or those few principals or superintendents who are the technology leaders in their organizations, nearly all of the rest of these people probably have no leadership training…here are reasons that we require leadership training for our formal leaders – they have to do with learning how to effectively facilitate change, provide appropriate support, mobilize stakeholder buy-in and involvement, operate within political and legal parameters, etc. One of the reasons that technology is marginalized and viewed as a non-essential component of most K-12 school systems is because the vast majority of our de facto technology leaders lack the background training and knowledge to effectively lead, advocate, make change, garner buy-in, and so on. All they have is whatever they’ve gained through the hard knocks of day-to-day experience and we all know how variable that can be.
Source: Scott, McCleod, Dangerously Irrelevant

This is right on target. I have all the questions, but how does the tail (ed-tech) wag the dog? Better yet, BECOME the dog? What solutions work for you as an ed-tech administrator? After all, being a transition techie is fine and good but it’s always in recognition that your work is irrelevant.

Integrity in the face of persecution, honesty about our failures, forthrightness, putting the skunk on the table, recognizing the power of one…it still boils down facilitating change district-wide with groups that believe the work you’re about is irrelevant to the real work that teachers are doing in schools. In fact, the only answer seems to be what Cheryl Oakes shared in a comment…increasing the number of conversations.

If you want to become a leader,
you must learn to follow the great way.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.

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