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Friend, or Foe?: Tech Staff and Teachers Don't Always Get Along
By Jim Moulton
4/4/08Relations between tech-support staff and educators is an emotionally charged issue, and I have thought about writing about it for quite a while. But I had an experience last week that made it clear to me it was time to gather my thoughts and ask a question or two.
As you read this, you might wonder whether I understand the complexity of the issue, that there are multiple sides to it. In this posting, however, I am specifically speaking to teachers. I will speak to the tech staff in a later post.
Earlier this week, I was working with a high school teaching staff on purposeful and effective technology integration. The talk turned to filtering of Web content, and I expressed my concern that many school technology-support employees routinely make filtration decisions with little to no interaction with front-line educators. And then I saw something I see way too often: Folks started looking sideways at one another and making comments under their breath, and a general unease permeated the room.
Something was going on. It was immediately obvious this group of teachers did not perceive the tech staff in their school as friendly. Rather than let it pass and carry on with the subject at hand, I said, "OK, what's up? Talk to me. Tell me about the tech folks in your school."
Please let me assure you that some of my best friends are people who work on the technical side, both in schools and in the corporate world. Jeff is coordinator of educational technology for Maine, Carmel works for the state Department of Environmental Protection, and Chris is the chief information officer for a large energy and building-supply company that stretches across New England. All three are tech savvy, and all three are great people. And though Jeff is the only one I have a professional relationship with, each is a person I would not hesitate to get in touch with to ask for help if I was in technical need. And they would help me.
And it is not only tech stuff. In fact, I still remember when Carmel took the time to respond clearly to an early effort of mine to write technical documentation. Though she did not respond positively to my work, she was right. She cared enough to teach me how to do that kind of writing effectively, and it is a skill I continue to use in my work more than a dozen years later.
Over the years, I have met many technical staff in many schools like these three friends of mine. They are folks who are good with networks and with people and who enjoy working with both. They understand that a school is not a business and that the job of the tech-support staff, as for all school employees, is to support the kids through improved opportunities for teaching and learning. They get that operating a school's network as if national security were at stake runs counter to a school's foundational purpose, and so they run a network that is "school friendly."
Let's look on the other side, the area the teachers I was working with that day inhabit. They work in a school where there is an adversarial relationship between teachers and tech staff. I think this is often the dirty little secret of technology in schools. It is something teachers tend to be willing to live with rather than confront: tech-support staff who seem to not like the people they are supposed to be supporting.
Tech-support staff in such settings tend to talk down to educators, as if a teacher's lack of technical understanding makes him or her less worthy. They often work to perpetuate the myth of their importance in maintaining a critical thin blue line -- that without them, the network would fail, the administrators would be at risk of legal action, and the ugly side of the Internet would invade the schools willy-nilly.
Once, when I was attempting to access a wonderful collection of QuickTime virtual reality images at panoramas.dk while on a school network, a director of technology in a relatively large school district told me he had "blocked all foreign Web sites" because he felt he couldn't trust them. "Oh, my goodness," I said to myself as I thought about the curricular impact of this independent act of censorship. "What about all the tremendous content available through the BBC? Ouch."
Now, I must admit that being a director of technology is a huge and often thankless responsibility, and dealing with networks in a setting that includes the messiness of classroom teaching means that stuff will inevitably happen. Kids will mess up and kids will do amazing things; teachers will mess up and teachers will do amazing things -- real life, real school, real teaching, real learning.
But when your job description says, "You are responsible for the network," accepting this kind of messiness is tough because -- let's face it -- stability is the holy grail of network management. So we should not be surprised it's hard to find people who can effectively manage both the complex technical networks and the complex human networks found in the schools of 2008.
So, teachers, how about your school? Are the tech-support folks who manage your network friendly to you and your students as teachers and learners? Sometimes yes, sometimes no? And how do you know? Please, don't just respond yes or no. As an example, can you independently override the school's filter? Do they trust you? Please share stories of how your interaction with tech-support staff impacts your teaching. I will be interested to hear.
Friend, or Foe?: Tech Staff and Teachers Don't Always Get Along
Submitted by Lisa (not verified) on May 9, 2008 - 16:10.
Our tech. department has undergone changes in the last year. Before this school year it was a running joke that to enter the office it was best to have someone tag along because of "safety in numbers." One person retired and another moved and now the office is manageable for us as teachers. The men and women in there are always bogged down with fixing the teacher laptops or the libraries computers and as soon as something is fixed, something else is usually broken. They work very hard and I give them a lot of credit because, quite frankly, it's a job I wouldn't want.
That being said, none of them have worked in a classroom. We can't even utilize sites like puzzlemaker.com to create review activities. Lots of sites are blocked but the students still get around them. We recently had a student suspended for hacking into the system and accessing both teacher and student accounts. It really makes me wonder why sites are blocked that students still can access? Shouldn't we worry more about security so that incidents like the one with my student don't happen again? I am probably just naive about this and there is probably more behind the scences than what I know but a lot of this doesn't make sense. I just recently started my master's program and my speciality will be technology in the classroom but I am afraid that I won't be able to do the activities I want to do if I don't have the technology to back it up.
Technical staff and teachers
Submitted by Brad Edwards (not verified) on May 8, 2008 - 08:12.
Jim:
I worked in one school district where the Information Technology Director often said that he didn't want to know anything about education. Really ! What he wanted was for us teachers to tell him what we wanted to make happen, and it was his perception that his job was to make that happen. As he led the technical support staff, there was little educational technology leadership from the top. It was up to the building coordinators (three of us) to figure it all out. And since there was a lack of leadership, we were stuck with no clear directions until we had to agree on and submit "Grade Level Expectations" to the state. Needless to say, the three schools were often in different directions.
Too often the technical staff has zero's and one's in their minds; they tend to be linear thinking folk. That's a good thing in many ways, but educators need the non-linear approach as do their students and that's where conflict can enter into the relationship. The more learner control, the better the learning experience and the longer the information stays......network administrators and technicians don't always understand that.
http://penobscotriver.edublogs.org/
Friend, or Foe?: Tech Staff and Teachers Don't Always Get Along
Submitted by Rob Whitbey (not verified) on May 5, 2008 - 11:33.
We have a very high turn-over rate for our tech staff. We do have some very good long-term techies, but most work here for a year, then move on to better paying districts.
We do have a problem with our content filtering, but I am told this decision was made by the Superintendent, not our tech department. We used to have passwords to deactivate the content blockers, but apparently teachers were giving the passwords out. So now, we are heavily filtered and most of my lesson prep has to be done at home. I am surprised I could even get to this site since it had the word "blog" in it.
Hope to see you again soon out here in CA, Jim.
Tech Staff and Teachers
Submitted by J. D. Wilson Jr (not verified) on April 22, 2008 - 08:53.
I think at our school educators that use technology have a different mission from the tech staff. The tech staff's first concern seems to be that the networks and the various technological components (grading systems, software, hardware, etc.) are working properly and are kept as up to date as our budgets can afford. They have a second mission which involves gatekeeping and firewalls. The tech staff's greatest concern in this regard is the nature of the materials that students can access online inside the building. This results in students not being able to do research on writers (I am an English teacher) like Emily Dickinson and Charles Dickens because of certain letters in their names when isolated from the context of their names. The tech staff has been willing to unblock some of these sites, but it seems that each year the exercise has to be repeated and that there is no permanent solution to the problem. I understand what the tech staff is trying to do but this often interferes with what I am trying to do as an educator. This is also ironic in light of the fact that the tech people are usually the first to tell me that the students know how to get around most things. It is my impression that there is frustration on both sides of the equation. On the part of teachers over how the work they are trying to do is made a bit more difficult and on the part of the tech staff over how they have to run interference between a number of different constituencies with missions that are often at odds with one another.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
How lucky we are at our
Submitted by Marcia Tyrol (not verified) on April 22, 2008 - 05:37.
How lucky we are at our school to have a tech director from industry to keep our servers running and manage the problems that 800 users cause or confront every day. He brings a new perspective to education and yet supports us in our efforts at integration.
I certainly agree that blocking sites can be detrimental as we search for meaningful ways to bring the world into our classrooms. I am starting to use Skype in the hopes of establishing safe real life communication for my Spanish students. It is blocked, but we figured it out!
Anything new takes time and effort AND cooperation...so I guess as teachers we need to ask that good old standby question, "Is it worth the time it takes?" If it is, we need to take the time and work out the issues to make out classrooms Web 2.0 connected and to challenge ourselves to learn what we need to learn to be 21st century teachers.
"It is blocked..."
Submitted by Jim R. Moulton (not verified) on April 23, 2008 - 16:10.
Hello, Marcia!
I am always interested, in discussing filters with high school teachers, to see how many have had the following happen: In class, on the big screen, the teacher is heading to a web site. The site is filtered. A student says, "Hey, [insert teacher name here] want me to get you around that?" And the teacher is stuck with either not using a web resource they had hoped to use or "breaking the rules..."
Best use, of course, is not to go underground. Rather, as you and others have suggested here, it is to work collaboratively - tech staff, teachers, and students - as a team with the purpose of improving teaching and learning. I advocate for the teacher override.
As to the connections to Spanish speakers... Have you looked at http://www.cilc.org? They send out a weekly (I think) newsletter of "collaboration requests," and often there are folks looking to make some connections to support language growth. You do need to register, but there is a "free" level that I use.
Cheers.
Jim
Teacher Control
Submitted by Maddie Davidson (not verified) on April 18, 2008 - 12:09.
I was fortunate to have started teaching just as the internet was hitting the classroom. My Science Dept chair and I were the "tec team." This was also the time pre net-nannies, and it was up to the teachers to keep internet behavior in line. We learned to keep the screens of the computers facing the instructor! We made our own internet use contracts. Use of the full power of the internet gave us some of the best lessons: meaningful, current, memorable.
I understand that the students must be kept off MySpace and youtube on the school's computers, but as a teacher, I do not think that the richness of youtube for instructional materials should be blocked to me. I can plan next year's lessons if I turn in the "unblock" request, but the immediancy that was the best part of internet use is gone. There are other useful sites that are blocked as well. I wish there was a way for teachers to monitor their own use as they develop lessons based on the internet or use the richness of the internet's video, pictorial, and yes, even game!, sites.
The enemies of technology integration
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on April 18, 2008 - 08:55.
There are no sides to technology integration in schools. It is a complete and equal partnership. The integration of technology is not a process. It is a project where everyone comes to the table with a valuable piece of information and responsibility.
Everyone has to be willing to listen to each other create a consensus and move forward. Obviously no one has all the knowledge so no one person can make the best decision.
The most damaging enemies of technological integration are time and priorities (leadership). No person has unlimited time and thus has to set priorities or have them set for them. I would love to know how to code is ASP but I don't have the time; really it is not a priority. Teachers and technologist often make decisions in reaction to what is in front of them, without the input from the others. Technology staff looking at full T-1 connection and a constant stream of complaints might shut down the t-1 to video and audio streaming. Not to censure but to constrain bandwidth. Or a teacher reconfiguring a space for the same reason - they need it done now. Though necessary at the time, both situations, if not addressed again later could lead to a negative situation.
Technology permeated every part of our environment today. Unfortunately, many of us fumble through the various technology processes because we are in a rush to get to the actual work at hand. This is whether we are installing software to do taxes, or calling a bank to get account information (voicemail menu systems). It is a fact of life.
We owe it to our students to work together as equal partners to make this a successful endeavor.
Technology is not at the forefront in my school!
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on April 18, 2008 - 08:45.
I am so frustrated with the way technology is handled at my school. I have been asking for a Tech. Lab. for the past two years...and the response I get is: "Well we had a lab a number of years ago, before you came, and then it was dismantled. Each classroom got 3 computers. We had difficulty funding a position for a person to be in charge..." Funding is a CHOICE and it is obvious that technology is not at the forefront at my school!
Friend or Foe- tech staff?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on April 18, 2008 - 05:28.
Our tech staff is probably one of the friendliest because they are mostly teachers- either they were or they are currently. We only have one person who wasn't, and sometimes he can be a little abrasive. He does tend to restrict some of the abilities that you would normally have when he reconfigures the computers over the summer (ie. downloading). Overall, we can override the filtering software to a degree, which is important for me as an art educator because everything tends to be blocked when it comes to art images and artists. In the case that the filtering software will still not allow a site, all we have to do it is e-mail the IT department, and they will change the permissions for the site. Out tech staff will bend over backwards to make sure that you can use technology in the classroom. They are always researching new ways to incorporate technology in the classroom, and are always available for troubleshooting. As a staff, we are not typically talked down to about technology, but that could be because a large group of us have masters degree in instructional technology that was through a school intiative. I'm sure that our school is not typical, and I know that our tech staff is one of the best (if not the best).
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