Welcome in. Today we are looking at a really
fascinating friction point that kind of exists
right under our noses. Yeah, it's everywhere
once you know what to look for. Right. It is
a dynamic that affects almost every single office
organization and school you interact with. But
we just rarely ever talk about it. You are here
because you want that thorough knowledge and
those multiple perspectives without the overwhelming
information overload. And that is exactly what
we are going to unpack. Today's Deep Dive explores
what happens when the rigid, highly structured
rules of corporate enterprise technology just
sort of collide head -on with the messy, unpredictable
reality of the classroom. It is a phenomenal
topic. We are looking at a deeply ingrained systemic
issue here, viewed through a very specific, high
-stakes lens, because when you look at the infrastructure
that powers our modern world, the tension between
the tools we use and the missions we're trying
to accomplish is literally everywhere. And to
guide us through this, our source material today
is this brilliant, just eye -opening article
by Dr. Gary L. Ackerman. It's titled, Where the
Rationale for School IT Breaks Down. Such a good
piece. It really is. And our mission for this
Deep Dive is to explore the hidden friction between
enterprise, IT professionals, and educational
environments. But to really grasp of this, we
sort of need to establish the baseline reality
of what a modern school actually is. Right. We
have to set the stage. Exactly. For anyone who
follows enterprise networking, you know that
schools are no longer just chalkboards and overhead
projectors. They are massive, highly complex
enterprise networks. They absolutely are. I mean,
a modern school district is essentially running
a mid to large size corporate data center. Yeah.
They are managing thousands, sometimes tens of
thousands of endpoints. They have massive amounts
of highly sensitive data stored on local servers
and in the cloud. They're dealing with constant
simultaneous connections, complex identity management
systems for the students, the teachers, the staff.
And all of that while under constant threat of
cyber attacks, too. Exactly. To maintain secure,
reliable, and robust operations at that massive
scale, schools rely heavily on enterprise -grade
systems, and managing those systems requires
a very specific, high -level technical skillset.
Which leads us to the necessary marriage of IT
and schools, because, let's be honest, educators
cannot run. an enterprise IT network. No, not
at all. They don't have the specialized training
for it, and keeping a network of that size operational
is a grueling, round -the -clock job. It's a
demanding profession, so schools do what any
large organization does. They hire dedicated
IT professionals, and these professionals arrive
with a deep, highly technical toolkit. According
to Dr. Ackerman's piece, they are the ones configuring
the massive firewalls to keep the network secure.
They manage digital identities, complex access
authorizations. They configure the DHCP servers.
Which, just for the uninitiated, that's the background
system that automatically hands out IP addresses
so devices can actually talk to the network.
Right. Without it, your laptop is effectively
a brick. They're constantly pushing out operating
system upgrades, monitoring network health, repairing
infrastructure. Yeah, they're the mechanics keeping
the engine running, basically. Exactly. But here's
where it gets really interesting. Dr. Ackerman
points out a critical observation about this
specific skill set. The actual day -to -day work
of managing a network is essentially organization
agnostic. That phrase right there, organization
agnostic, that is the linchpin of this entire
issue. What he means is that the raw technology
does not know or care what building it sits in.
Setting up a routing protocol or configuring
a firewall, it involves the exact same technical
keystrokes, whether you are doing it for a Fortune
500 financial firm, a massive retail chain, or
a local public middle school. But let me push
back on that for a second. Is that really a bad
thing? Yeah. Because schools are massive targets
for ransomware right now. Shouldn't we want an
IT professional who brings strict, uncompromising
corporate security standards to a school district?
Like if the technical work is the same, why does
it matter where they learned it? That is a very
fair point, and it's exactly why this dynamic
is so difficult to navigate. You do want that
high -level security expertise, but what's fascinating
here is the massive blind spot this organization
agnostic mindset creates regarding the ultimate
goal of the institution. While the technical
work, the literal cable routing and command line
interfaces is identical, the strategic goals
of a business versus a public school are radically
different. Right. They're totally different worlds.
Exactly. Exactly, and they accomplish those different
goals by setting entirely different priorities.
So an IT professional who cut their teeth in
the corporate business world comes into a school,
and they naturally just bring those corporate
survival metrics and business world mentalities
with them. Precisely. In the corporate world,
an IT department often has to justify its budget
by showing a return on investment or by treating
internal departments as clients to be managed.
Okay. Furthermore, in a business, if a system
goes down, the impact is usually financial. Maybe
you delay a meeting or a transaction is paused.
But in a school, if a system goes down, The entire
core mission of the organization halts in a room
full of 30 restless teenagers. The stakes, the
pacing, the immediate human impact are completely
different. When you drop a corporate survival
mechanism into a publicly funded school, it just
short circuits. OK, let's unpack this. Because
Dr. Ackerman provides four specific real world
anecdotes from his career to illustrate this
culture clash. These are great. And rather than
treating these IT professionals like clueless
villains, I really want us to look at why these
breakdowns happen because they perfectly highlight
what goes wrong when corporate IT meets the classroom.
The examples in the text are incredible because
they bring this theoretical disconnect into sharp,
uncomfortable reality. So let's start with the
first story. Dr. Ackerman describes a conversation
he had with an IT professional working in an
educational organization. He asked this person
about the difference between business and education
users. And this IT professional actually said
out loud, in business, we try to upsell customers.
So we generate more income. We should treat teachers
just like we treat customers, upsell them to
get more out of them. Wow. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, it reveals a profound
systemic misunderstanding of the organization's
purpose. Yeah. But you have to look at why he
said it. This IT professional isn't trying to
be malicious. Yeah, not at all. He is applying
a profit -generating, business -centric model
to a public service because that is the metric
of success he was trained on. In the corporate
sector, upselling an internal department on a
new software suite might get you a bonus because
it supposedly drives efficiency. Right, but applying
that to a teacher is totally absurd. The goal
of a teacher isn't to generate revenue for the
IT department. Yeah. They don't have a budget
to be upsold on anyway. Their goal is student
learning. Trying to upsell a teacher on technology
they don't actually need just to mimic a corporate
sales metric shows an IT department acting as
an independent profit -seeking business within
the school rather than a support system for the
school's actual mission. It treats the educators
as a revenue stream instead of a collaborative
partner. Yes. It completely misses the point
of why the school even exists. The IT department
is basically trying to validate its own existence
using the wrong measuring stick. That mindset
of treating the school like a generic corporate
entity leads to some massive blind spots regarding
the actual tools being used. Which brings us
to the second story, the LMS mystery. Oh, this
one is wild. It is. Ackerman describes an IT
professional working at a school that had specifically
prioritized supporting online learners. Online
learning is their massive strategic push. Right.
And six months into their role, this IT professional
finally asks, so how do we get into the LMS?
This raises such an important question about
the layers of technology management. You have
an IT professional who has been employed for
half a year and hasn't even looked at the learning
management system. Crazy. Now, for an audience
familiar with this space, we know the LMS isn't
just a peripheral tool. It is the entire digital
campus. Yes. It's where the assignments live,
where the grades are stored, where the interaction
happens. It is baffling. It's like being hired
as the head mechanic for a Formula One racing
team and spending six months meticulously polishing
the toolboxes, sweeping the garage, organizing
the spare tires without ever once bothering to
look into the hood of the actual race car. You
are doing mechanic things, but you are ignoring
the race entirely. That is a perfect analogy.
And again, it goes back to that organization
agnostic trap. For those six months, that IT
professional was likely doing their job perfectly
by corporate standards. They were maintaining
the firewalls, updating the servers, managing
the Active Directory authorizations. They were
managing the infrastructure layer flawlessly,
while remaining blissfully ignorant of the application
layer. The actual tool that teachers and students
were relying on every single day to achieve the
school's strategic goal. Exactly. They managed
the technology in a vacuum, completely separate
from the learning it was supposed to facilitate.
And that detachment from the core mission gets
even more destructive when it comes to routine
maintenance. Ackerman shares this brutal third
story about a desktop support team. This is a
tough one to read. It really is. They decided
they needed to update the operating systems across
the network. so they completely re -image the
classroom computers the day before classes start.
This is perhaps the most visceral example in
the text of conflicting priorities, and it is
a classic clash of timelines. Re -imaging, as
we know, wipes the machine clean and lays down
a fresh, standardized image. It is a total wipe.
And because they did it the day before school
started, This action completely deleted all the
files teachers had meticulously saved to their
desktops over the summer. Everything. It erased
all the specific configurations, the shortcuts,
the lesson plan software settings. Everything
the teachers had done to prepare for the arrival
of the students was just gone. I want to look
at this from the IT department's perspective
for a moment though. Okay. In a corporate environment,
if there is a critical vulnerability or a massive
patch rollout required for standardization, you
execute it immediately to protect the network.
Right, because the risk is too high. Exactly.
To the IT team, an updated secure operating system
is the ultimate priority. It represents a closed
security loophole and a clean audit checklist.
From their vantage point, they accomplish their
technical goal perfectly. I see your point. If
there is a zero -day vulnerability, They have
a mandate to patch it. Yeah. But the timing is
the issue here. They were entirely blind to the
academic disaster they just caused. Yeah. The
technical timeline, patching the systems, completely
disregarded the academic timeline of the first
day of school. Exactly. It's the ultimate the
surgery was a success, but the patient died scenario.
The computers were perfectly secure, perfectly
updated, and perfectly useless for the teachers
who needed their lesson plans the next morning.
The IT team succeeded in their silo, but the
teachers, and by extension the students, suffered
a massive setback. The corporate mandate for
immediate security patching collided with the
educational mandate for instructional readiness,
and the IT department didn't even realize there
was a collision. It all culminates in this interpersonal
friction we see in the fourth story. It's about
the rigid, ticket -based mindset. Ackerman relays
a situation where an IT coordinator set up a
computer lab. Naturally, once the teachers actually
get the students into the lab, real world needs
pop up. Always. A software interface doesn't
work for a specific student, or a web filter
is blocking a legitimate research site. So the
teachers ask the IT coordinator to tweak some
configurations to help the lesson run smoothly.
This is a very common occurrence in any dynamic
environment. The theory of the setup meets the
reality of the user. But the IT coordinator responds
with incredible stubbornness. They refuse to
adapt, simply saying, I did what they asked.
If they needed something else, they should have
asked for it. What's fascinating here is how
clearly this demonstrates the failure of the
corporate IT help desk model when applied to
a classroom. Think about the iTool framework
or any standard IT service management model.
You submit a ticket with your precise requirements,
the IT department fulfills the parameters of
that ticket, and the transaction is closed. It
is highly structured and static. But a classroom
is the exact opposite of static. It is dynamic,
messy, and unpredictable. You have a 45 -minute
class period. You cannot put a help desk ticket
in, wait 24 hours for a response, and hope the
students suddenly understand the material the
next day. No, you can't. The needs change in
real time as 30 different human beings interact
with the material. The IT coordinator's response.
I did what they asked. is a defense of the technical
process. They are essentially saying, I closed
the ticket. Wow, yeah. It shows a complete refusal
to adapt to the reality of the educational process,
prioritizing the strict parameters of the IT
workflow over the actual learning outcome. They
viewed their job as fulfilling a technical request
rather than supporting an educational environment.
So what does this all mean? We have this absolutely
necessary marriage between complex enterprise
IT and schools. You can't run a modern school
without them. True. But we have this massive
culture clash where corporate IT priorities,
whether it's ROI, rigid security patching schedules,
or ticket -based workflows, end up destroying
educational workflows. Where do we go from here?
Ackerman pivots to a solution, talking about
redrawing the boundaries of responsibility. He
essentially outlines a policy of mutually assured
destruction if the boundaries aren't respected.
He states very clearly, Nothing good happens
when we allow educators or school leaders to
manage the IT. As we've discussed, they don't
have the expertise, and attempting to do so takes
them away from their primary role. Teachers should
not be configuring firewalls or managing DHTurkey
scopes. Right, they shouldn't be turning the
digital wrenches. But equally and crucially,
Ackerman states that nothing good happens when
we allow IT professionals to determine what educators
can do. The IT department cannot be the tail
that wags the dog. They cannot dictate the pedagogical
boundaries based on what is easiest for them
to manage from a technical standpoint. They cannot
lock down a system so tightly for corporate -level
security that a teacher cannot effectively teach.
This brings us to the core takeaway, the new
paradigm that Ackerman is advocating for. Effective
school technology absolutely depends on educators
leading the technology decision -making. Yes.
The teachers and the educational leaders have
to be the ones steering the ship because they
are the only ones who truly understand the destination,
which is student learning. He adds a very crucial
caveat to this, though, acknowledging the friction
of getting educators to the table. Leading technology
decision -making is outside the traditional area
of expertise for educators. Does that make sense?
Because of this, educators are too often reluctant
to take the lead. They feel intimidated by the
tech, the acronyms, the sheer scale of the enterprise
networks. So they defer to the IT department.
They abdicate their leadership because they don't
understand the infrastructure. They hand over
the key. because they don't know how the engine
works. Exactly. But Ackerman's call to action
is that while it is completely reasonable that
educators aren't prepared to do the literal hands
-on work of managing the IT, they absolutely
cannot remain ignorant. That is the pivotal shift.
Educators must be prepared to understand exactly
how IT decisions will ultimately affect their
schools and the students who attend. They don't
need to know the command line interface to program
the router, but they must understand conceptually
how a blanket router configuration policy might
block vital educational resources. They have
to learn enough of the language to be effective
advocates for the students. They have to sit
at the table with the IT professionals and say,
I understand the corporate mandate to update
the operating systems for security, but you absolutely
cannot do it the day before classes start. Yes.
We need to find a window that protects the network
without destroying the academic timeline. They
have to act as the translators between the technical
reality and the educational mission. It requires
a massive cultural shift. It requires moving
from viewing IT as an independent, authoritative
silo that dictates policy to viewing IT as a
collaborative service provider whose sole ultimate
metric of success is how well they support the
educators. Absolutely. And that shift cannot
be driven by IT. It has to be led by the educators
themselves. taking ownership of the strategic
decision -making process. This is so profoundly
relevant, not just for schools, but really for
anyone listening right now. Whether you work
in education, a corporate office, a fast -paced
startup, or a nonprofit, this deep dive highlights
a crucial universal challenge. It really does.
It is the constant tension between simply managing
the tools your organization uses and actually
leading the mission of your organization. It
is so easy to let the constraints of the tool
dictate the scope of your work rather than demanding
that the tools serve the work. It really is a
universal challenge across every industry. We
rely on these incredibly complex systems and
we defer to the experts who manage them. But
that leaves us with a final provocative thought
to really mull over. Dr. Ackerman makes a compelling
case that the underlying infrastructure of our
technology, the networks, the servers, the firewalls,
is largely organization agnostic. It doesn't
care about your mission. So my question to you,
the listener, is this. How often are the silent,
purely technical decisions being made right now
by the IT department in your own workplace, unintentionally
rewriting the strategic goals of your organization
without you even realizing it? Are your daily
frustrations at work, the blocked software, the
rigid workflows, the poorly timed updates just
the result of a corporate IT mindset clashing
with your actual mission? It is definitely something
to think about the next time you are forced to
submit a help desk ticket that doesn't quite
capture the reality of your problem. Thank you
so much for joining us on this deep dive into
the hidden friction of technology management.
Keep questioning the systems around you, and
as always, stay insanely curious. We will catch
you on the next deep dive.