WEBVTT

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Welcome to today's deep dive. So, if you've been

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in a school recently and a digital whiteboard

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just, you know, totally freezes in the middle

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of a lesson, who usually gets the blame? Right.

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Well, usually the teacher blames IT and IT blames

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the teacher. Exactly. And that's exactly what

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we are unpacking today. We have this really fascinating,

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pretty short blog post by Dr. Gary L. Ackerman

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over at hackscience .education. It's titled On

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Observation About School IT. And our mission

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today is to kind of dissect this intense blame

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game and figure out who is actually at fault

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when classroom tech just breaks down. Yeah, and

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Ackerman really nails the psychology here. I

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mean, the users, so teachers, students, administrators,

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they genuinely feel like the tech they have to

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use is just totally unreliable. Oh, for sure.

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And then, you know, when they put in a ticket

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for help, IT just seems completely unresponsive

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or honestly even dismissive to them. Right, which

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creates this immediate massive resentment. I

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mean, it's basically like yelling at a waiter

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because your meal's delayed, but, you know, behind

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closed doors, you have no idea that the kitchen

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is actually secretly on fire. That is a great

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way to put it. But, I mean, let me push back

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a bit here. Isn't it the IT department's job

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to, like, prevent those fires in the first place?

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If the network crashes, shouldn't they have just

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built a more resilient network? Well, they would

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love to, but they aren't the architects of this

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kitchen. They're just the underpaid line cooks,

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you know? Technologists in these environments

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are handed severely insufficient budgets, chronic

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understaffing, and these completely unrealistic

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timelines. Oh, wow. Yeah, that sounds like a

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nightmare. It really is. And to make it worse,

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they are constantly dealing with users who, frankly,

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misuse the technology or just flat out refuse

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to read the manuals. Right, like a student treating

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a tablet as a frisbee or something. Exactly,

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or, you know, a faculty member downloading malware.

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So the technicians are spending half their day

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just doing triage on entirely preventable damage.

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While still being expected to maintain a flawless

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system. Yeah, a flawless infrastructure with

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zero additional resources. OK, so if teachers

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are super frustrated by lack of support and IT

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is paralyzed by lack of resources, they're both

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basically just reacting to a terrible environment,

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which I guess, points the finger straight up

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the chain to school leadership. It does. And

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that is the core systemic failure that Ackerman

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identifies here. Leadership has this habit of

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executing what is essentially a hardware dump.

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A hardware dump. Wait, what does that actually

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mean in practice? Well, it means they purchase

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this massive fleet of, say, netbooks or tablets

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and literally just drop them onto the teachers'

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desks. Oh. Just for the optics, like looking

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like a modern tech forward school, but they skip

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the actual integration. Yes, exactly. There is

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no pedagogical training provided at all. And

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you know, learning to turn a device on is easy,

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but fundamentally shifting your curriculum to

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teach with that device? Yeah, that requires a

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ton of time and support that teachers just aren't

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given. Right. And I have to imagine the IT department

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is getting the exact same treatment on the back

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end. Oh, it's usually worse for them. Leadership

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mandates these huge deployments without allocating

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any extra funding for like the network bandwidth

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or the storage. Because hundreds of new devices

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means you need way more infrastructure. Yeah,

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and just the actual manpower required to maintain

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all those new endpoints. So leadership basically

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creates this huge vacuum of resources and the

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staff at the bottom are just left filling it

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with animosity toward each other. Which leads

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to Ackerman's ultimate really brilliant twist

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in this whole thing. Okay, I'm ready for the

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twist. Lay it on me. When you really analyze

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the vehement complaints from the teachers, and

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then you analyze the intense pushback from IT,

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both groups are absolutely accurate, justified,

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and completely reasonable in the blame they assign

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to the other. Wait, really? Like, both of them

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are right? Yes. Nobody is lying here. The teachers

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are entirely correct that IT isn't supporting

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them, and IT is entirely correct that the teachers'

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demands are just impossible to meet. Wow. So...

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everyone is genuinely just a victim of a really

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poorly implemented system. Exactly. The structure

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itself basically guarantees failure. So all that

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hostility, it's very real, but it's entirely

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misdirected. That is just such a wild realization.

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It's this perfect storm of structural collapse.

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And, you know, it leaves you wondering how common

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this dynamic is outside of just education. Oh,

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I'm sure it's everywhere. Right. Like, think

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about your own workplace to everyone listening.

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If every single department is 100 % justified

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in their complaints about each other, how do

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you even begin to fix a system where everyone

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is right to be mad? I mean, are you just yelling

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at the waiter in a burning kitchen? Or is it

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maybe time to look at who actually designed the

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restaurant?