It has been two weeks and I’m still waiting for the software that will allow me to save images from the document camera.

Why is making life simple for the IT staff the most important consideration?

When I am collaborating with a teacher and we find a site we want available that is not, we work together to formulate our request to our IT Director We include goals, objectives, relationship to our standards, AND how students will benefit.

Each time this complete packet of information has been provided the sites filtered out have been unblocked, some of them even permanently.

I think if we make sure the powers that be can see the relationship to instruction and student learning they loosen up a bit. But more often than not the IT gets an indignant response and a seemingly pouty teacher when it comes to the argument about filtering or restrictions in general.

There have been plenty of discussions of late about IT and their lack of understanding and their quick as lightening readiness to lock down everything and block the rest. Our knee-jerk blog commenting is not going to change that, and I have read many vicious responses both in defensive of IT and for less restrictions. (I may have even seen the same in my own blog, on my part and others.)

The solution is education and communication with IT. Tell your friend to try thinking in terms of why having admin rights over the computer is best for the student and learning. Then perhaps those priviledges will be returned.

1) Make a list of everything you can’t do and why it’s instructionally relevant that you accomplish it.

2) Contact your campus principal and explain this to him/her. If your relationship with that person is lousy, then you’ll probably be better off just buying your own laptop and using it for your own purposes, just don’t let students use it…and many districts are implementing policies that PREVENT personal laptops on school networks, invoking CIPA, even though it doesn’t necessarily apply…or worse, writing it into the Acceptable Use Policy.

3) Share your list with everyone and ask them to sign a petition for greater rights/access.

4) Share that at least ONE person on the campus needs to have admin/install rights on campus computers to expedite the process, then volunteer to be that person. Keep track of what you do and make sure that your campus technology committee has a process in place for allowing new software installations.

5) Remember that schools today aren’t about technology use, even when it impacts instruction, but rather, high-stakes test prep and tutoring. Why are you wasting instructional time using technology?
;->

hoping one of these works for you,

Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://mguhlin.net

The folks in IT put up a big fight against the move but our boss, the assistant superintendent for instruction, backed us up and we won the debate.

Five years later, very few of the problems predicted by IT have come happened. Certainly there are teachers who have lost all the data on their laptops due to their own stupidity but those “teachable moments” have helped us educate them.

I’m not sure my story is going to help this particular teacher. However, we (IT folks as well) need to remember that we are working with adults. We need to treat them as such, which means teaching them how to best use the equipment and then trusting them to do that.

I returned to my computer applications class in Sept, only to find that I was reduced from admin to a student level user by the network admin I had trained! No reason given. At the same time, I had my laptop taken, re-formatted and I was locked out of the laptop because I was using chat with a student on mine who was on career study. I was helping this student with ASP web programming at this school placement in another state. Chatting was against the school’s AUP.

To top it all off, my own student, who I also introduced to server management in his senior year, returned from college and landed a network admin job, only to side with our IT staff, and continues to this day, to restrict educator’s access and power on the network.

Schools, and leading edge faculty have lost their creativity and forward thinking digital applications and integration due to poor network admins who take on way too much power and control in the district. The school administration bows down to these network admins who give them FULL CONTROL and anything they want, while on the other hand they smack down the teaching staff. When a teacher goes to a school admin they simply do not see the same problems and they think the teacher is out of line. So the problem goes un-resolved, and the teacher is at a dead end.

This will continue until school districts across the nation place their network administrators on the proper level BELOW the administrative and curriculum levels so that the educational leaders can once again lead. Until them, network admins will run the schools, and they have no clue what they are doing educationally.

One last idea….a dream solution:
OUTSOURCE ALL NETWORK SERVICES….yes….outsource 100% of the IT network, storage, email service, and web hosting in a school district to a remote service like GODADDY.com and Google.com. Then FIRE the network team and simply have a small team that repairs and installs hardware. Then let the teachers manage their own labs and it would be far better, cheaper!

29 years in education
1986, I installed the 1st PC in my school
Hayden

I don’t expect we will ever get to a point where everything is opened up without some type of approval process, but having instructional experts (teachers and instructional supervisors) make the decisions is much better than IT making these decisions.

Also, we do have at least one person at each school site with admin access to assist in situations where an immediate response is needed. It works well, but we need to do more.

Even though my position consisted of working very closely with our Network Administrator, we were often at odds with each other because his degree in computer science did not allow him the ability to KNOW what educators need and when they needed it. I have always contended that had he been an educator in the classroom first, he would be very conscientious of what he blocked and what he didn’t and honestly, it became a game of “power” which I have seen to some extent in many districts.

Ways around this…if speaking directly to that person will not unlock your needs, document, document, document your MANY failed attempts at trying to reason with this person. I would work my way up and next speak to your building principal as MANY times they are not aware of all of these roadblocks and I know that for a fact. Show your documentation and then build a case on how valuable it is for you/students to be able to utilize something that is blocked. This will typically get you with an administrator on your side that is fully capable of building a case FOR YOU.

It is really sad that this game must be played but on the other hand, I do know that in order to protect our students we had to block certain sites which is very controversial…..do we BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK or do we educate our students and NOT punish the entire student body for an infraction that a handful of students may try and take advantage of.

We had a technology advisory team with community members, technology people in the district, teachers, several administrators and even a student (most important person on that team IMO) and so it got better as our Network Admin could not just BLOCK something before emailing out to about 5 of us to gain OUR opinion and in MANY instances, once a teacher explained to our group it was NOT blocked……

Good Luck my friend!

I have a specific recommendation that, in my district but would DEFINITELY start a conversation going at the highest levels. Taking item #1 from Miguel Guhlin’s suggestion and bring it up the chain appropriately in your school asking for a timeline of a response. Be concrete with what you are asking for and provide data. Personally, I don’t agree with petitions. They seem a little whiney. If you can provide data (like 51% percent of all college students will be bringing a mac to college with them), that will carry a lot of weight. The next step when you get a response, (assuming the response is negative)is to contact the people in your district who get elected. In my district they are the members of the school board. There is a member for each area of my county. So that would be the person I would contact. Not sure how your schools work, but in my position as a district tech specialist, I see the power these people carry first hand. When a question comes to them (from whoever.. a parent, teacher, principal… doesn’t matter) they start to ask questions because they want to provide you with an educated response! And when THEY say JUMP, well you know the rest.

Now be careful… do not get your students involved and be aware that your principal might be embarrassed. However you “might” ask a close friend, who happens to be a parent, to call this board member to ask these questions (with ammunition from you, of course).

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I have to admit that I’m not that impressed with the concepts put out by Linda and Lee to work “behind the scenes” to influence board members with “friends” using “ammunition” you provide. I do, however, agree that having the building principal on board is very much a necessity. Although my IT person was opposed, once I basically said that it needed to happen, she did so. Now remember one of the joys of administration is that I am now responsible for making that decision, and the first teacher that messes up will create a nice little mess for my credibility with IT, the superintendent, and the school board. It’s not always as nice and tidy as we make it out to be. We do have people in the educational community that violate both written rules and common expectations. That is where most IT and administrators hesitate as it becomes their necks, not the teachers that become knife-ready.