Framing the Agreements - The carrot and the stick

It is 2:30 am and I'm thinking about our agreement meeting that we are having tomorrow. Here's my dark night diatribe

People deserve to know why we have rules. Write the agreements from the ground up. Start with the rationale for having agreements at all. People have a hard time with being constrained in their choices. We need to explain the rationale behind the rules. There are specific reasons we have the specific rules. The overall reasons are:

• A network is a public place, fraught with the same benefits and precautions of any public place. We share the road with many other people. The rules of the road are are the speed limits, stop signs, vehicle inspections, etc. You get the idea.
• Limited funding for technology. We have to live within a budget. This budget limits the number of computers we can make available and the services we can provide. We have to be proactive in what we choose because we can't afford all the choices. A computer, on a network, that serves many people, has many costs. All of these costs have to be considered.
• Limited time to provide support. We are trying to provide a set of services that can be maintained by a limited number of staff. The more skilled we become as a whole, the more services we will be able to provide.
• Limited time for training. The more time we take for training, the more self-sufficient teachers can be, the more time available to provide additional services. Until we make a commitment to train teachers to some basic level of competence, we are going to be busy helping them along and fixing some basic problems.
• Limited understanding of the network and the common good. It is ironic but until and unless people understand the implications of their behavior on the overall systems (stated above), we need rules to guide them. I was not given the passwords to critical computer systems until I understood the implications of making changes in those systems. Before we can drive the streets on our own, we have to learn the rules of the road and demonstrate competence. It would be irresponsible to give someone the right to drive without the requisite skills.

A Reality. A building administrator made the point that these constraints will be denied and the rules will always be challenged. In his words, "That's the nature of teachers. They want to work independently, autonomously and without the limits that serve the bigger picture. They aren't concerned about the problems their behavior will cause others but how they will deliver tomorrow's lesson."

With this reality in mind... we should be prepared for people to try and go around the expectations. We need to explain and correct them when they stray from the expectations. People deserve to know why we have these rules. I would like them to accept the rules. I would like them to acknowledge the reasons we have the rules. But this may be too much to expect for some - perhaps most. First they don't understand how all the pieces affect one another - how management of one computer at a time is inefficient. Second, just as that administrator said, some simply don't want to look at issues from the big picture. They are focused on how the limits affect them and their classroom only.

The many carrots of technology. Let's remember, there are still many choices available to people. The agreements are created to constraint behavior in some key areas. But within those constraints, there is plenty of room to move. In fact the constraints are in place to afford us the ability to operate and continue to provide a working system to use. We need to help teachers see the ways in which they do have choice. We need to let them know of some of the resources available to them? How can we help them connect to these resources? We certainly can't progress on limits only. We need to provide equal time to pointing them in the direction of opportunities.

Affordable - Sustainable Technology

In my school district we have a modest budget for technology expenditures. Among school districts in our region, we don't have the largest budget and we don't have the smallest budget. Perhaps it's just right :-) I don't know. But the fact is that we have a pretty tight budget and one that we have to live within. Another important detail is that technology expenditures are not controlled by the district office. At the time we established regular technology expenditures, we decided to distribute a substantial amount to the schools to spend according to their priorities. At the same time we asked them to complete a technology plan that described their goals and a plan showing that their expenditures are sustainable. It makes sense to me that, given the short life of technology, we should consider obsolescence and the replacement of resources over time. I have read about schools who have failed to do this long term planning and who end up with an assortment of computers and software that are outdated and in disrepair, without the money to continue programming.

In our district we are finding that the 5 year replacement of computers that we planned is inadequate to provide the number of computers needed for our students and teachers. Schools are hanging on to 6, 7, and 8 year old computers in their classrooms. On one hand I think this is great. I don't want to rush good computers to their grave. If it serves a purpose for someone I think we should keep it in service. At the same time, we have found that the maintenance and support of older computers can eat up a substantial amount of staff time. These aged computers can also cause a high degree of frustration when they are depended upon and placed in a mission critical task. And when a critical computer crashes, the expectation is that the technology staff will run to the rescue, save the data and restore programs. This is simply unrealistic.

So, like other resource we rely on - water, fuel, food, air - we live in an age where we are reminded of our limits. We cannot spend and consume like there is no tomorrow. We need to assess what we really need, ask if we can afford it - can we afford to acquire it, can we afford to maintain it, can we afford to replace it when it expires. Since the 1950s we (Americans on the whole) haven't been very worried about the impact of our consumption on our community or the planet. To the contrary, we created a culture that depended upon increased consumption. When the Twin Towers fell in 2001 and our economy shuddered, we were told to go out and spend, show those terrorists that they can't thwart our way of life. Well, here we are in 2008 and our economy has been attacked once again but the enemy is us. Our desire for more and our habit for spending (other people's money) has put our economy in crisis. We have gone back to the capitalist drawing board for a new play book. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Sorry for the economic rant, but I think it has significance to our microcosm called technology. It is time for us to be strategic about how we spend our precious few resources. We cannot afford to throw technology into the milieu and pray that it comes out right - that teachers will understand and use it wisely, that students will make constructive sense of it, that achievement will be advanced. It is time to get serious about spending. It is time to focus on the results we are aiming for. It is time to realize that we can't accomplish everything through technology, but we can accomplish something - if we narrow our expectations to the most important target.

For example; What if we decided that our technology would be focused on writing. Let's consider all the ways that technology could be employed behind to goal of writing. The most obvious tool is word processing. All of our computers come with a word processor. If we wanted to provide a word processor for every student, there are affordable tools available to this task. Beyond the word processor, we could develop an audience for student writing through blogs, wikis and email. The content that kids create on their computers could be saved on the computer or it could be saved on the web. Spend a little more money and you could purchase writing software that will give students feedback on their work. These wouldn't replace a teachers touch but they could provide immediate and constructive feedback to students that would be helpful to the writing process. Extend this further and we could adopt writing tools in spanish, translation tools. We could use the built in tools on a Macintosh to read the writing aloud to students. We could train student to create audio visual presentations with the focus on writing scripts. While it would be difficult to hold them back from the camera and the computer, we could build an expectation that good presentations must have a detailed script. Perhaps this will help them find a strong writing voice.

There is much more we could include in a "writing-technology plan" - literacy and safety in media and technology, research, grammar, spelling, etc. My point is that based upon this plan we could create a list of the resources (people, technology, time) that would be required to make the plan work. Based on the number of students and the other activities in the school, we could build an affordable, sustainable plan.

Most important to our plans is that the majority of people are pulling in the same direction. Everyone doesn't have to have the same level of understanding, but the plan needs to be simple enough and significant enough (have meaning) to most of us that it will be carried out. When we attend a conference, we are successful when we take and implement one or two ideas to fruition. I'd like to apply this kind of simplicity to technology - some constructive limits. Some teachers will continue to experiment with a variety of approaches and techniques - no problem. But their experiments will have to be supplementary to the main idea.

Will this bring our spending and fragmentation into line? It's hard to say. Perhaps the conversations that we will have will help bring some rationality to our process of purchasing and implementing technology. To look at technology as a means to the end, an expensive means that requires conscious tending.