All organizations have acceptable use policies which that define what users are allowed to do with devices and systems owned by the organization. These policies are approved by organization’s governing bodies (school board are generally responsible for adopting policy) and are intended to protect the organization and the systems they support. In general, the role Read More
Educators’ technology needs tend to be different from those encountered in other businesses and industries. Educators generally value flexible systems that allow them to assess the usefulness of software, sites, and services; and to respond to new discoveries and changing expectations quickly. Students who are just learning to read and write often find complicated systems Read More
When preparing courses, whether they are planning or designing, instructors make decisions about what to teach, how to teach it, and how to evaluate students’ learning. When teaching for deeper learning, faculty attend to many more aspects of learning than what to tell students and what answers they should recall. The many decisions and the Read More
Humans have a long history with technology. It is reasonable to conclude that humans and their technologies cannot be separated. Without our tools, our species would not have become the Earth-altering species we have become. When reviewing the history of our technology, we see that information technologies are a relatively recent invention, but for several Read More
It is widely known inside education (but much less so outside of education), that we really don’t know what to teach or how to measure learning. Educational researchers will dispute this, as they spend their entire careers defining learning and measuring it. In science that is allowed, and we accept the conclusions of studies, but Read More
One of the most significant changes faced by information technology professionals in schools (and other organizations) has been the adoption of cloud-based data and productivity systems. Whereas previous generations of IT professionals configured servers that were physically located on campus to provide necessary services (for example file storage and print management) and they installed applications Read More
The arrival of desktop computers reversed the trend to marginalize electronic technologies and information in classrooms; digital tools and digital media have become important tools for all students, and comprehensive education is understood to provide students experience using these tools. Early in the history of desktop computers in K-12 schools, the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Read More
As they collaborate to make decisions about what technology to install and how to manage it, school and technology leaders must share understanding of three ideas. First, the systems must be sufficiently secure to remain functional and reliable, but open enough to allow for the functions educators deem necessary. Second, to accomplish secure yet flexible Read More
The expertise we need to improve education comes not from business leaders nor the other citizens who dedicate their time and energy to serving on boards of education or in the legislature, nor even from education leaders (most of whom have built careers building compromises that satisfy different constituencies). The expertise comes from scholars who Read More
Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976) was a botanist and plant scientist who lived in worked in the Soviet Union. He was the director of the Institute of Genetics which was part of the Academy of Sciences within the USSR. In that position, he was able to exert political influence and he used that influence to promote a Read More