Category: School

shadows..

On By Beyond DigitalIn information technology, International School IT, School4 Comments

Three years ago my department’s Network Manager was killed in a tragic car accident with his child. The event was traumatic for his family, friends, everyone in my department and the larger school community. He had worked at the school for 10 years, and had created a robust network, and daily supported many innovations and changes I was facilitating. He was an integral part of the day and  a true leader with the long term IT vision. Life’s bitter realities can be overwhelming and a challenge to synthesis. The coldness of life in many ways.  The event marked me as an IT Director and friend profoundly, and to this day still is a reminder of the frailty of life.

From this event, I came to realize how vulnerable my department was (at that time 1 Network Manager, 1 technician, myself and a Database/Web Coordinator for 500+ machines). The structure we had was normal:  everyone had specific jobs, responsibilities, tasks and goals closely tied to their role and title. We collaborated as a team, used each other expertise to fill in the gaps, and had point people with our team who managed specific tasks associated with their title. It worked well, and we had a close team spirit and dynamic which complemented each member in a positive way.

Suddenly we had this huge hole in our knowledge and team expertise which vanished over night. We had been working on writing all procedures and systems down, and actually had done a pretty good job of having a paper trail. This to be honest was okay but when suddenly a key player with 10 years of institutional knowledge disappears you suddenly come to realize the huge gaps. The bitter reality is however tragic his death was, combined with the impact and emotion associated with the event to my team, I came to realize (a cold realization and something that took time to digest) that the school, systems, servers and support needed to continue. We as a school had transitioned quite quickly to 24/7 services, and expectations by all. Peoples memories are short.

By coincidence and good fortune, my technician who had worked closely with the Network Manager had gained a fair amount of expertise, and with the manual of procedures and systems,  under immense stress, we were able to continue to run things. We got additional support with the help of an outside contractor to get things to a place where we could run, maintain and troubleshoot things. My technician was promoted to being a Network Manager. We then hired two other technicians (we now had almost 650 + machines) and thanking the stars and good karma where able to continue and then engage in new developments and innovations.

A story that ends well….. unfortunately not, today this Network Manager is in the hospital after an appendix operation which developed huge complications and is at this stage indefinitely out. Positive vibrations to him daily.

We as a team again feel stressed and somewhat bewildered at our luck.  Again I am faced with a abnormal situation (par for the course maybe in someways being a school administrator and  IT Director)  and now even more of an expectation of 24/7 services, a one to one laptop program Grade 6-12, a 2-1 one laptop cart program in Grades PreK-5 plus a million, web based services, plus the other things which just eat up all your days in an IT Department.

As a result of my first experience I had started developing a full program with my two technicians, database/web coordinator and Network Manager of shadowing. The goal was and is for the team to have enough expertise with each others roles to be able to stand in for the other in case of an emergency. This process has taken a good solid year. The first step was to clearly define each person’s current role, revisit the job descriptions (how often do we read these 🙂 ) and then pair the team up to shadow each other. My Network Manager was and will continue to be shadowed by one of our technicians, my Database/Web coordinator is being shadowed by the other technician. We have been tying this new responsibility to each person’s job descriptions, and then having weekly meetings in tandem with each persons smart goals. It has been a slow process with plenty of challenges but has generated new conversations about team collaboration at  a level we had not had time to do.

Some of the players

  • Control: the challenge has been for the folks with the key knowledge to share, open up and be able to present information in a way the shadow understands it and can actually act upon it.
  • Ego: As the gate keeper of all knowledge for your role, how to give this up, and still feel the key player when you are sharing your skills to another. This closely tied to culture, expectations and comfort.
  • Time: finding a downtime when two people can actually sit down, isolate themselves and learn together.
  • Learning: Understanding and supporting different learning styles.
  • Support: Critical to this dynamic is the PD, time, motivation and guidance that is provided.
  • Is it working: The evaluation and assessment of the process by all involved
  • What is important: Defining the essentials pieces of knowledge, and then ensuring they are worked on in the shadowing relationship.

It is a work in progress, somewhat on hold temporarily, but now more than ever a realization how important it is to have a sustainable shadowing system within your department to ensure continuity of services. One thing that has come to the forefront is that having a clear paper trail in a format and venue which allows someone to step in is not enough . The reality is that today our international schools expect and work with a 24/7 connectivity and if these services are down, then at some levels international schools do not function. A reality of the working world.

to be continued……….

….can we do all

On By Beyond DigitalIn International School IT, School, Social Networks, Web 2.01 Comment

this is a cross post from the following blog I manage and facilitate  http://ecisitcommittee.edublogs.org/
…in the last week there has been an enormous amount of traffic regarding the effects related to multitasking and student learning. The issue and variables associated with this topic are huge, and pending who you read it seems to go from the world is about to end attitude to hey it is no problem and live with it. I think the reality is that with the new technologies and internet access we all have access to we are somewhere in the middle in our understanding of the impact of multitasking on our own lives. I believe our students are not learning better or worse but differently. This as a result of the 24/7 access each user has at their finger tips and in tandem the incredible power to be content creators. Naturally with so many choices come many decision to be made and this I think is where we as educators can support, facilitate and mentor many of our students in being mindful of the implications, impact and importance of taking a balanced approach to the idea of multitasking and interacting with so many different powerful tools. Here I share three of the articles which come with different perspective on the topic:

In tandem with this topic comes the bigger issue, the fact that there needs to be significant paradigm shift in education. For educators, parents and students to be able to engage with the rapidly changing world some significant changes are due. I think collectively we understand this but how do we move forward is the bigger challenge. No better person to share this topic than Sir Ken Robinson with the follow wonderful animation and potential conversation for us all.

break on through

On By Beyond DigitalIn Integration, School, Social NetworksLeave a comment

In my experience there is an odd side to international schools when it comes to the issue of making sure to teach the virtues of freedom of expression, studying great leaders, thinkers, philosophers, mathematical theories and ensure our students get a balance in the way we approach learning.  We believe generally that an open door philosophy towards different opinions, perspective and views is important. I would say we are quite passionate about this, and feel it is a critical element of many of our school’s missions.  The goal to ensure that our students get exposed to as many different perspectives as possible allowing them to construct their own knowledge. That is nice and of course something most parents and educators would find difficult to argue against. Then comes Web 2.0 Social Networking and/or some other technology and the general first reaction and approach is BLOCK IT! Now many will argue that social networking or blocking certain technologies is not the equivalent of teaching the virtues of freedom of expression. I disagree. Okay in my situation at my current school, we block facebook, twitter and others on our wireless network, a decision by the collective leadership team. On the two labs and one library lab we do not block it on the machine connected to our LAN network, the rational is that there generally is always someone there to supervise. This situation is flawed in my mind. In some ways I am to blame as IT Director for not pushing or developing a strong enough argument with my fellow administrators to have the conversation to unpack what we are doing, and exploring the pedagogic value of such blocking. Always easier to reflect in hindsight.

What happens then is when students sneak through our firewall via proxies, or have their own independent connection to the internet through a USB modem from the local cell phone company that they plug into their laptop, the blocking becomes useless. The times a teacher catches someone then the issue is brought up, and we the IT department have to again explain that however much we block the chance is that some student will find a hole. This is the flaw, we are focusing on the blocking and the events where students get around it and not on the more important issue what, how, why and when are they using this. We avoid the  opportunity to leverage this tool to engage both student and teacher into a conversation on the pros and cons of using this, and how and what might be responsible use of such tools in a school setting. This whole dialogue and dynamics is completely swept under the carpet.

Most educators would argue I assume that the issue of Facebook (Social Networks) as a teachable moment has no place in the classroom, and blocking it is good, as this allows us then to focus on the important task of teaching the lesson at hand. I challenge this perception and view. There are about 500 million plus folks on this planet involved on a regular basis in social networks in different shapes and forms. Attached to this is a huge industry developing to take advantage of this new form of communication. With this dynamic there are big economic opportunities for individuals, companies, organizations and institutions to generate incomes. This is something that will continue to develop and the reality is it will become more and more part of our own social communication fabric both on a personal and institutional level. Some would say it has already happened.

So……I think with this shift there is now a critical role for educators to start exploring how to integrate social networks into school curriculum.  We have a responsibility to share, educate and develop an understanding of the intricacies and options of using such communication mediums in our day to day lives. If Grade 2-3 students are setting up Facebook profile you cannot expect them to clearly understand the privacy setting tools on their own, you cannot expect them to read the fine print of an agreement. It has come to the point where instead of blocking this, and letting them work things out on their own undercover, we as educational institutions need to develop a robust set of learner outcomes for our students on the dynamics of social networks. It needs to be not the responsibility of some IT department technician or counselor but part of  the day to day fabric of each teachers tool kit: sharing, exploring, facilitating, and mentoring our students how to be responsible users of social networks. We need to let them explore these mediums with a critical mind unblocked, as we would expect them for the ~French Revolution, Plate-tectonics, a perspective on Macbeth or the Israeli- Palestinian situation.

The world changed yesterday! Today we need to engage ourselves in a clear understanding that social networks, youtube, chat, texting, virtual worlds, and the current digital landscape are now an integral part of our day to day fabric both socially and professionally. With this there are a whole host of issues, learning, understanding and perspectives that we need to equip our students with to be able to survive effectively with balance and as critical learners.  In today’s world, we as educators,  have an important ethical responsibility to take charge of this, and engage throughout our day within our own lessons what this all means, and how to develop a critical understanding of how best to use these: when, where, and appropriately….. if we do not, basically we are ignoring today’s world that we all live in. I would find it hard to believe that any of us would want this as part of our own educator’s philosophy.