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Episode 22. This isn't your parents' educational technology.

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For generations, the fundamental purpose of schools has been to give students

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experience using the dominant information technology and data sources in the society.

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When the dominant type of data was printed and scripted on paper, education took a very

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familiar format. Reading, writing, performing calculations on paper, and drawing on paper

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became the fundamental skills practice as one progressed through their education.

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In the middle of the 20th century, electronic digital computers were invented,

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and by the 1960s, advocates were promoting their use in schools. By the 1980s, desktop

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computers were common in classrooms, and in the decades since, high-speed internet connections,

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wireless networks, and one-to-one computing had become ubiquitous in schools. This reflects a

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reality of society at large as well. White-collar work, much blue-collar work, and popular culture

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are dominated by digital data and electronic digital computing. While there are many reasons why school

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leaders and educators should be concerned with the amount of access to digital devices their

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students have, there is general agreement that educators should use these tools in their teaching.

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School operation also depends on digital information and IT tools. In addition to keeping the organization

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operational, for example buying supplies, paying bills, and managing human resource functions,

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schools collect, manage, secure, and report data about the students they enroll.

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When a school is open and classes are underway, there are likely to be thousands of devices

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powered on and accessing both local area network resources and sharing a common connection to the

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internet. These connections are essential to our work and to our teaching. The magnitude of the

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problem of providing all digital devices on campus with fast, secure, and reliable connections is

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considerable. When I started in education, tech-savvy teachers could reasonably manage one or two

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devices in each classroom in their spare time. I know because I did. Today we have enterprise

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IT systems installed in our schools. When I started, we spent our technology budgets primarily on

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devices that put devices in users' hands. Today the budget spent on devices users never see or

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touch, things like switches, routers, servers, access points, and other network devices, and the

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software needed to keep these devices operational consumes a large part of the IT budget. Keeping

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the enterprise IT systems operational requires staff that were not necessary when I started.

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Technicians, system administrators, data specialists, and webmasters are all employed by schools.

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Those individuals, along with the chief information officer, are responsible for those systems and

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their use. They oversee the installation, manage the operation, advocate for the support, and plan

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for the improvement of IT systems in our schools.