Protocols and practices are ostensibly objective. The same rules apply to all users and, especially those that are controlled by technology are applied with precision. The reality in schools, however, is that not all users have similar capabilities and some protocols and practices appropriate for one group of users may not be appropriate for others. Read More
The policies that guide the definition of IT-related protocols and procedures are also affected by rules that regulate school operations. Because many IT users are children, and much of the data collected and stored by schools are about children, school and IT leaders are obligated to conform to certain laws and regulations that vary by Read More
Especially late in my career working in k-12 schools, I often drew the ire of guidance counselors and school leaders by recommending students consider community college for their first stop in higher education. For context, late in my career, I worked as a licensed teacher, but my role as an educational technology specialist found me Read More
Educators know there is no possibility that education can be politically neutral. Sure, we generally avoid taking an explicit side in any election—in one’s role as a public school educator, they cannot even advocate for passing the local school budget. All knowledge is, however, useful in either supporting or rejecting a conclusion; all decisions can Read More
Several factors make it impossible for commercial software developers to update operating systems and applications indefinitely. Even open-source operating systems and applications that are developed by communities of programmers rather than businesses are usually retired. When software is retired, the publishers no longer release security updates. At that point, responsible IT professionals will upgrade the Read More
In education (as in other fields) we hear leaders who proclaim they are “data-driven” and they “use evidence.” Despite this, there tends to be agreement within the education research community and within the practitioner community that research is not a factor that affects decisions I the manner we would all hope. (In New England the Read More
To minimize the threats of incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the work done by others, effective IT decision-making in schools requires the collaboration of individuals who approach them from very different perspectives, and it is unusual to find single individuals who have expertise in more than one of these perspectives. When designing and redesigning IT Read More
Stephanie Moore and Heather Tillberg-Webb’s Ethics and Educational Technology: Reflection, Interrogation, and Design as a Framework for Practice by Stephanie L. Moore and Heather K. Tillberg-Webb (9780415895088) continues to deliver on the promise summarized on the cover. Ethics, we have seen, should be approached from a design perspective. As designers, we are encouraged to be Read More
Compared to IT users in business, school populations are different. They bring different skills to the IT they use, they need more flexibility more often than business users, and their needs change over time (only to return to the original need). These characteristics arise from the facts that students have emerging literacies; it is not Read More
Ethics and Educational Technology: Reflection, Interrogation, and Design as a Framework for Practice by Stephanie L. Moore and Heather K. Tillberg-Webb (9780415895088) could not have arrived as a more propitious time. For six months, we in education (k-12, community college, university, professional, and all other settings) have been dealing with ChatGPT and other generative AI. Read More