Episode 16.
My team professionals who learn their craft in organizations other than schools come to
work in schools.
They are surprised by many differences between working in business and working in schools.
Among the most striking of these are the differences between the users they support.
What are these differences?
School users bring different skills to IT compared to business users.
They need more flexibility in what they do and how they do it and their needs change
over time.
These differences arise from the fact that students have emerging literacies.
It is not unusual for primary grade students to only be learning to read and the key borders
new to them.
This means many computer interfaces and input options including typing may be very difficult
for students to use.
Even with clear curriculum guidelines, teachers and students have different information and
computing needs at different times of the year.
We also find teachers who teach similar courses use different technology and their lessons.
Further, school years are periodic.
Just when all the elementary school students are becoming facile with computer, the school
year ends and teachers and IT professionals must prepare for a new group of technology
newcomers.
Does it really matter?
I mean, IT professionals just work on technology.
If it works, then their job is done.
I don't think that's true.
It's important for all IT professionals who work in schools to understand the nature of
the users and their specific needs.
Every decision made and every action taken by IT professionals regardless of their role
affects end users either directly by providing troubleshooting, training or other support
or indirectly by selecting, installing and configuring systems and interfaces.
All IT professionals want their systems to meet the needs of their users and in my experience
we sometimes make assumptions about our users that may not be true.
Consider the assumptions about users capacity to operate the devices to complete their necessary
tasks.
For those who have experience managing IT and organizations where all the users are
adults, they can assume some level of skill and knowledge.
Those assumptions are also reflected in the cases studied as part of IT training and higher
education and workforce development programs.
I maintain there's five differences between the IT users and businesses and the IT users
in schools and it's important that IT leaders and school leaders understand these differences.
Let's hear them.
First, business users tend to be competent in basic skills such as literacy.
When building systems for business users, IT professionals can assume the users have
some basic digital literacy skills and they can operate a computer that they can read
the screen and directions and interact with the graphical user interfaces so they can
accomplish the tasks they were hired to do.
When referring to children, I think it's important to use the term emerging competence
to characterize their abilities.
As they become more competent readers and writers, they'll become more competent users
of IT as well.
Can't we just be patient and wait for students to develop these skills?
Sure, we could, but we can also make some reasonable accommodations so that everyone
can use a computer.
Let me tell you a story.
When upgrading the Active Directory servers in a school that enrolls students in grades
K through 12, the new technology coordinator did not change the minimum complexity requirements
and passwords for the organizational units containing students.
When they first logged on to the computers, they were prompted to change their passwords
and they were met with these complexity requirements.
Students in the primary grades found the task of creating a password with A characters and
a combination of letters, uppercase letter, lowercase letters, numbers, special characters.
They found that unmanageable.
The students were effectively locked out of computers because of their inability to type
passwords.
The teacher happened to be one of those who value technology and used it for many activities.
She was not happy that her teaching was so affected by this change.
Okay, I see how that would affect students' use of technology.
What is next on your list?
Second, business users tend to have very clear and specific needs and IT requirements.
They need the software they need and they need access to the data they need in order
to complete their assigned tasks.
If the hardware and connectivity are sufficient to run their software and access their data,
then most users are satisfied.
Members of the accounting department don't care if they cannot edit video on their workstations,
for example.
In schools, many different users with much different software needs may use specific
computers during the school day.
The same hardware used by students to run the accounting software for business class
during one block in the schedule may be used by students in the digital arts class to edit
video during another block.
As cloud computing and internet-connected notebooks have become more popular in schools,
the need for IT professionals to manage different software for different users has been reduced.
There does remain situations in which teachers cannot accomplish their curriculum goals without
sophisticated hardware and software, and they cannot always predict the systems or the capacity
that they will need in advance.
Wait, you mean teachers don't know what they need?
Compared to business users, no they don't.
The third difference between IT and business and IT in schools is sufficient flexibility
to allow for interest-based uses.
The information sources that must be accessed and the applications provided, either on the
cloud or on a machine, depends on the interests of the students and the curriculum and instruction
choices of the teachers.
A further reality of developing IT systems for social settings such as schools is that
the best made plans are only plans.
Many educators do not really understand what they need until they experience with students,
so teachers sometimes ask that systems be reconfigured after IT thought their job was
all done.
That is three.
What is the fourth?
In business and industry, users are selected for the role.
Employees have selected themselves for the work by applying for the job and they were
selected for the position by being hired.
Both are gateways that ensure those who use computers for their work have the necessary
skills or the ability to gain them and they are motivated to learn how to use the systems.
If this proves to be not true, then there are options for the employer and the employee.
If training or other support does not resolve problems in using computers, then the employee
can be removed from the position.
In public schools in the United States, attendance is compulsory and schools are obligated to
provide education for all students.
For these reasons, IT professionals in schools must accommodate a wide range of users and
schools in which a student has denied access to the IT they need may violate that individual's
right to an education.
You mean we can't kick students off computers for violating acceptable use policies?
Well, I'm not saying that, but I am saying we need to ensure IT is an effective learning
tool for all students.
And if we're going to revoke a student's access, we better have a pretty good reason
and be prepared to provide an equivalent level of instruction and that might be difficult
to do.
I see.
So, what is your fifth difference between business users and school users?
The final difference is the relative stability of business users compared to school users.
In school, users' skill changes over time in a periodic way.
The students who struggle to use keyboards early in the school year become more facile
as they gain experience.
When the next school year begins, those students are replaced with others who lack the experience.
As curriculum changes, the IT needs to change as well.
Teachers who are introduced to new teaching methods and resources are usually anxious to
try them.
Families move into town and their children have different needs from the other students.
All of these are situations in which the IT professional must vary from their original
plans to meet unanticipated needs.
I'll tell you another story that really happened.
The candidate for vacant technology coordinator position was being interviewed and they were
asked, how would you respond to a teacher who returns from a conference and asks you
for help configuring systems so they can use a tool that they learned about?
The response was, well, we set up user devices in the summer and if they don't tell me
what would they need before we start, then it has to wait until next year.
The candidate was not hired.
In reviewing the differences between IT users in K-12 schools and other organizations, we
see they are largely based on variability.
In organizations other than K-12 schools, IT professionals can predict the skills of
the users and their IT and data needs.
These are within clear and narrow bounds.
In schools, IT professionals must provide IT for diverse populations of users who have
diverse needs, need access to diverse information, therefore they have diverse technology needs.
You told us a story of students getting locked out of computers because they couldn't type
sophisticated passwords.
How did that end?
Yeah, so the teacher complained to the principal who said, hey, it's up to the IT coordinator,
I can't tell them what to do.
So the next time the teacher was scheduled to use computers, she had the assistant superintendent
come in.
Once they saw how incredibly frustrated the students were becoming, they directed the
IT coordinator to change the password policy.