Like many districts across the country, the District that I work with is striving to encourage technology innovation and adoption among its faculty and student users.  Just recently we put Smartboards in several of our classrooms and are showcasing/sharing best practices for how they can be used to integrate web-based content and services into the curriculum.  Of course, installing Smartboards is a district-sanctioned, district-funded technology initative; and one that we believe will encourage innovation in the classroom.  However, it got me thinking….

Does the best innovation come from the top down or from the bottom up?  Should we be encouraging teachers to innovate on their own and let the best practices bubble up to be shared with their peers?  If so, what demands does this put on the technology department for support - help desk, technology, and/or security?  What does this mean for students who now have three different teachers using three different blogging tools located at three different URL’s?  Is this innovation or chaos?

On the other hand, if teachers have to wait until the district provides them with approved technology (software and/or hardware), then how can we blame them for the lack of technology innovation???  Often, when teachers aren’t provided with the tools they need, they purchase them on their own or take advantage of a free service on the internet that’s available outside of the district’s network.  Should this behavior be applauded or chastised?

I’m not sure what the right answer is.  I’ve actually been in educational environments that have taken one approach or the other.  As the person who - at that time - was in charge of training and support, I can tell you that top-down is easier; but it requires buy-in from the teachers and it requires the district to make it a priority.  And making it a priority means getting it into the strategic plan and budgeting appropriately for the approrpriate  software, hardware, and training.

So back to my original question.  Does the best innovation come from the top down or from the bottom up?

First of all, you need to know that I was a teacher for 20 years and therefore, my view of how technologies can shape education are viewed from that lens.  I recently returned from the National Educational Computing Conference held in Washington, DC and I heard a lot about “connecting communities” and promoting “student engagement”.  I think we can all agree that those are appropriate goals for a District, and the more they can be achieved, the greater the chance that the District will, in fact, benefit from the support of all of its community members - both internal and external.

However, what I heard less about were the specific, and demonstrable, strategies for how a district can accomplish those goals.  What things might a district invest in that will have the greatest impact on closing the “digital disconnect?”  What can WE, as individuals, do to further the conversation?  What strategies might we suggest?

Interestingly, I overheard several suggestions while at NECC.  One participant mentioned that it might be worthwhile to engage directly with teacher education programs at local colleges and universities to ensure that preservice teachers are adequately prepared to leverage the technologies that today’s digital natives have ready access to.  Another participant suggested that “teachers just need to get out of the way.”  Personally, I was offended by that comment and would recommend the opposite…. Provide teachers with the training, technology, and support they need to integrated technology more effectively within the curriculum.  Yet another encouraged classroom innovation; allowing teachers to make individaul decisions about web-based technologies that could enhance teaching and learning.

What do you think?  What works?  What doesn’t work?  What remains to be explored?  I look forward to your thoughts.

Several years ago we heard about the “digital divide” – the separation that existed between those (in education) who had access to technology and those who didn’t. There was a tremendous grassroots effort to close this gap – federal and state programs offered sizable grants to school districts to install WAN and LAN infrastructures, subsidized internet connectivity, and provided the necessary hardware so students would have access to the most advanced instructional resources available.

By most accounts this has been successful.

At the same time consumer technology has also seen an explosion of adoption in the last decade. Affordable personal computers, increased availability of high speed internet access, and the cellular phone boom has helped to narrow the “divide” to the point where it is no longer at the forefront of mainstream USA.

Now we are hearing about what has resulted – a ‘digital disconnect’ where the technology is accessible and digital natives are using it in their everyday lives – the problem, these same technologies are not incorporated into the educational process – thus a ‘disconnect’. And I suppose if you look at it more broadly, the disconnect isn’t just between the students and the schools, but the disconnect is among all the constituents and the communities that revolve what I will call the ‘hub’ – ie: the school district. All of the districts communities need to be connected – technically. If the school district is in fact the ‘hub’, how can it be successful if they aren’t?

While I didn’t coin the term digital disconnect, I would like to explore the breadth of what it does mean. What are the various disconnects?  How do they affect our lives?