--- TIC-TECH message:
Hi all,
The following note is from Currie Morrison, who started tic-tech. He has
never been one to mince words, pull punches, or speak without passion
about technology in education. He's not on the list anymore, but you can
reach him at buck63@home.com It's great to hear your voice, Currie - Mark
Mark Ahlness
mahlness@cks.ssd.k12.wa.us
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 14:01:49 -0800
From: currie <buck63@home.com>
To: Mark Ahlness <mahlness@cks.ssd.k12.wa.us>
Subject: perspectives
Hello Mark,
You may want to pass this along to the mailing list if you feel it has any
worth. Otherwise it is just a note to you from something like 16 months into
retirement.
First, I am enjoying my retirement from the everyday grind of working in
schools. Although it has not been a long time since I was around, I am
pretty much out of the loop to the inner circles of what goes on in Seattle.
So my perspective at this point is more or less what I get out of newspapers
or off the local talk radio and some occasional contact with former
collegues and my reflections from my years in technology in the school
system.
>From what little I have gathered, nothing of any real consequence has
changed, nor did I expect any big changes. I am a little too cynical to
believe in the tooth fairy at this late date. I haven't heard the new chief
academic officers name mentioned in months at least publicly. That is a
shame because it is still in the area of academic application that
technology still needs the most help.
However, I would like to pass along some long range perspectives dating from
the early 90's when I first started the quest for communications technology.
Communications technology was always first and formost in my mind as our
goal with technology. All of my early work in that area points to it and it
is still online at my personal web site and some of it still on the Hale
site. www.members.home/buck63 So in a sense my perspective may be a little
narrow in focus, because I always felt and still do think, that technology
has the most to offer our schools as a research tool. Interestingly enough
though, the communications act of 1996 actually reflects my attitude on a
national scale, so I don't feel that I am too far off the mark. (you know
that little charge you see on your telephone bill each month)
However, what we saw in district wide technolgy implementations was a
hodgepodge of different approaches including no approach to technology other
than a way to spend some money on new equipment to run the same old junk
applications that were running on apple 11e machines at the time. In other
words some schools had no real plan at all. We dropped the ball right at the
beginning to everyone's shame.
Maybe that was OK, it wasn't a huge amount of money by today's standards but
still a tidy sum. However this lack of serious planning and implementation
in the early going really ultimately hampered ongoing efforts to float
another technology levy till late in the decade.
Whatever technology impetous had been establshed was largely missing by the
time new funding sources were becoming available. And in the interim, the
big debate went on over which computers to buy. In retrospect this turned
out to be a huge waste of everyone's time and efforts. It was bitter,
devisive, dumb, and an energy waster extra ordinary because what we really
needed was focus on academic aplications of computer technology. Not what
brand of operating system and computer to buy.
On the one hand we had information services types thinking mainly in
mainframe and centralized mode with word processing as the crux of their
interpretation of what computers could do for school classrooms, and on the
other hand the academics who did not know much about the technology but
really wanted to experiment and try out new things to see what applications
computer technology could add to the curriculum.
Simply it was a more or less a protectionist mode that information services
espoused that restricted the free flow of information and the expansive mode
of adademics who felt the first empowerement of access to information. Also,
it is worth noting, that information services was and is just an extension
of the adminstrative hierarchy of the district. And as such, it reflects
the thoughts from the highest level of district management. So the mind set
I am describing is not just atributable to that department. How many of you
know the district flowchart of our structure. It is worth a look sometime
because it gives one a good idea who reports to whom and who is ultimately
in charge.
We could argue about the semantics of it all but this dichotomy is about
what it really boils down to in my view. Whatevet the reasons that resulted
in this conflict of ideas about technology in schools, it still comes down
to these two opposite views.
In manyways the cards were stacked against the academic types. Series of
meetings were establshed to argue relative merits of everything from what
models of computers to buy, what mail program, what applications...and on
and on. Often decisons were made finally, after the those who were
championing some change or ideas different than those of information
services, were meetinged to death and had to move on to other things leaving
the decision or no decision to those downtown. If I wasn't such a trusting
person, I would have thought that was the strategy all along. Afterall,
schools change but the adminsitration stays the same.
So disemination of information is more or less what I was all about
vis-a-vis technology....funny since that is of major importance to teachers
as well. This new disemination of information electronically soon ran into
some snags. The biggest one is that information couldn't be filtered as it
was in the old days and parceled out by those few from on high. Mind you
now, I am not talking about the desemination of pornographic content here.
What I am talking about is everyday information about the district for
instance that most employees knew little about before the electronice age
hit us.
Access to information is the empowering tool in the whole equation. When we
know something, it spurs us to ask questions. Questions that need to be
answered.
If we go one step further and create a communications board, then collective
ideas and thougths can be dispersed and discussed on their merits. This is
what happened at Hale beginning in 1993-94 with the implementation of
internet mail.
Two other highlights of increased communication that I think deserve a note
are the Tic-Tech list that first began as a small list of technology
coordinators in Seattle in 1997 and the summer workshops under the direction
of Les Foltos where teachers were taught how to create an educational web
site including lessons and the ability to upload to a server and have it
available for classroom use.
Both of these efforts were designed to muster support for teachers in the
use of technology in the classroom and to answer some of their questions
about the nuts and bolts of technology.
end part 1
Currie Morrison
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Feb 10 2001 - 23:11:03 PST