Tech Wars: from Home to School

In our home we have an iMac, Apple TV, personal and school iPads, iPhones for him and her, and even relic iPhones that serves as game systems for our boys or dedicated streaming audio players in far-to-reach places (think garage). It’s obnoxious. We use a wireless speaker system for whole-home audio. When it all works, we are none the wiser; when it doesn’t, it is intensely frustrating. Apple store galore, and what am I using to write this? An HP desktop computer.

I’ve heard the quote, “Apple products are for those who like to play. PCs are for those who like to work.” Each summer I become quite adept at using the iMac, especially with iMovie to create the annual “How to ENO” video. My iPhone is a wonderful tool for staying on top of communications (e-mail, Twitter, etc.). The primary balance is that I don’t let all of this tech push in on my family time and life. Above all, the lion-share of my output is done on a PC. With the use of Dropbox, I am able to work seamlessly on my home PC, laptops, or the four Edmond Public School desktop PCs that I utilize at various sites. I have tried Evernote to sync my work, but when it comes down to it, I am able to best produce using Microsoft products on a PC. Just today I used Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Publisher…and it’s our day off.

What does this mean as many of our schools consider a move toward wireless classrooms, in the cloud, using only Google’s suite of products (which continue to grow)? I have little apprehension about what comes next; I look forward to whatever it is. One of our greatest challenges in education, technology or not, is to continually create and to teach our students to be creative. Sir Ken Robinson’s widely viewed TEDTalk addresses creativity so well to say, “We shouldn't confuse ‘things not working’ with ‘therefore we shouldn't try anything.’” Our responsibility as creative change agents is to consistently evaluate if:

1. something is working and why/what parts.

2. something is struggling but may need more time.

3. something is not working and should be stopped.

4. something is working in one place but not another.

My primary concern regarding progressive changes to technology in the Edmond Public Schools is that, because of the size of even a small investment in such a large district, we may see something as struggling and thus give it more time, when in fact we should stop doing it. Likewise, because of our sprawling range of demographics from site to site, I hope that we continue trying new things, even if new ideas won’t work everywhere. Just as we expect students to process learning concepts differently, we should also expect success in one place and challenge in another even when dealing with the same new technology. We have a wide-ranging technology comfort-zone, and a key factor moving forward will be finding out what we know and building from there.