In recent decades, scholars have recognized that education is influenced by diverse factors and those factors exert complex and previously unknown influences. Shasha Barab, a scholar from Indiana University, Bloomington, and Kurt Squire, a scholar from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, reasoned that “learning, cognition, knowing, and context are irreducib[ly] co-constructed and cannot be treated Read More
105: The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness Last summer, I was attending a conference and the keynote speaker mentioned Todd Rose’s book The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness. I took the step that was not possible when I started my career, Read More
99: #Edtech for #Edleaders: Whom to Hire: Technology Integration Specialists For decades, those responsible for organizing and presenting in-service professional development for educators have used a variety of models for providing learning experiences for teachers, and these have been designed to support all aspects of TPCK and to accommodate the needs of individual learners. These Read More
98: Technologies and Structural Deepening When a technology developed for one purpose is applied to another purpose, the receiving technology is said to be structurally deeper as it becomes more complex than it was before the new module was added. Structural deepening can arise from several different causes: Users of a technology will actively seek Read More
96: #Edtech for #Edleaders: Network Planning and Installation An information technology network is much like other technologies as the expertise needed to design and build it is much more specialized and expensive to than the expertise needed to manage and operate it once it exists. Consider how an IT system in a school is similar Read More
A relatively new specialist to join the IT staff is the data specialist. The need for this specialist arises from both the skills necessary to manage the databases in which demographic, health, behavioral, academic, and other information that is housed regarding students and the increasing demand for data-driven practices. Schools store vast amounts of data Read More
116: #Edtech for #Edleaders: Beta-Testing “Beta-testing” is a term that is kicked around in the vernacular and in the popular culture, but it is actually a part of the system design and deployment work of IT professionals that is taken very seriously by the most successful IT designers. Beta-testing refers to the stage in design Read More
The idea of wicked problems has been addressed in previous posts on this blog: Wicked Problems Transparent Taming of Wicked Problems Solving Wicked Problems In my definition of wicked problems, I pointed out that “Every Solution Matters,” specifically I wrote: Wicked problems are social, so when planners design and implement a solution, it affects the Read More
We know humans are learners… students sometimes do not learn in the way teachers want them to learn, but that is a problem with the structure of school, not with students as learners. “How do humans learn in informal or ‘real-world’ settings?“ is an interesting phenomenon to study. Scholars are actively studying it, but it Read More
Technicians are the individuals who have one of the most important roles in IT system operations in schools as they are the face of the IT department to most members of the organization. A technician is likely to spend his or her day troubleshooting and repairing end users’ devices such as PC’s, laptops, printers, and Read More