A rchive Date
[ 25-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Education ]
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[http://education.zdnet.com/?p=309
A matter of perspective
Education Technology Higher Ed K-12
C. Marc Wagner
Services Development Specialist, Indiana University
"An education IT veteran"
Since I've been contributing to Education IT, I've come to realize that those supporting Education IT in the K-12 sector have a dramatically different perspective than those supporting Information Technology at the college and university level.
The reasons for this difference in perspective are complex and, in my opinion, detrimental to those we seek to educate. Nevertheless, the realities separating these two, very different, sectors cannot be ignored.
I've said more than once that those in the K-12 sector need to think more like CIOs and less like consumers. This is good advice even if it is not easily accomplished - but what does it really mean?
Well, consumers tend to buy from a short-term perspective. They are impulse buyers who assume all alternatives are of equal value so price becomes the driving consideration for their purchases. They also tend not to look beyond their immediate needs. CIOs, on the other hand, don't consider price to be the deciding factor. Instead, need - both immediate and anticipated - is the deciding factor.
The consumer does not consider the life-cycle of his purchase, either. Instead, the purchase is considered open-ended with the intent of keeping it until it is no longer repairable. When the consumer walks away from his purchase, it is worthless - and he has no sense of his total cost of ownership - or his lost productivity as his purchase ages. By comparison, the CIO knows how long he will keep his purchase before it is even made, and he will replace it while it still has a residual value in the aftermarket. In short, his total cost of ownership will be well understood.
Armed with this information, the CIO leverages his ability to buy in volume to seek competitive bidding in order to get the best price based upon need - not what he can use 'to get by'. Whenever possible, he consolidates his annual purchases in order to improve his buying power and his leverage. The consumer lacks this advantage but, with a little bit of foresight, even a small school district can leverage their buying power and extend their available discounts well below that of the consumer - if their perspective is life-cycle-based. In the end, the CIO knows ahead of his purchase what his TCO must be in order to stay within his annual budget and if the bid comes in higher than expected, the number of units is what is adjusted, not the specifications - established based upon anticipated needs over the life-cycle of the purchase.
I commented above that I believe that a short-term 'consumer' perspective is detrimental to those we seek to educate. Well, let me explain …
Teaching children, especially in a K-6 setting, is not about teaching facts. It is about teaching students basic skills - reading, writing, and arithmetic - and more importantly, teaching kids how to process information. Undoubtedly, I will get responses from those who feel that the use of technology in this setting is itself detrimental - or at least, not a necessary component of learning. While I cannot completely disagree with this sentiment (for instance, a calculator does not belong in math class and I would much prefer to see a slide rule used in science class), not seeking to leverage all available resources to insure that students have reasonable access to advanced tools early in their educational experience is indeed detrimental.
Does my six-year-old need access to PowerPoint in his public school to make a presentation to his classmates? No, of course, not. Has he benefited greatly by having the opportunity to do so! Most certainly, the answer is YES!
So what are some of the 'realities' that separate the local school district from the state university located in the very same community?
One obvious difference is the student population. Presumably, the college student has been prepared for the university setting by the very K-12 system we seek to improve. Lest we forget, those college students are only a subset of the high school population - one that was both successful in high school and motivated to improve their skills further.
Another important difference is centralized annual budgets constructed and managed with life-cycle funding in mind. These are essential - at the state level as well as at the district level - in order to achieve the purchasing power required for a meaningful competitive bidding environment. There are certainly examples of decentralized IT budgets at the university level but the resulting fragmentation of resources make larger projects nearly impossible to fund and implement efficiently.
Perhaps the most counterproductive characteristic of K-12 IT funding today is politics. We've been reading for months now of state-wide, and even national and international efforts underway to provide premium-priced technology to large numbers of individual students (many underprivileged) with little consideration of how those dollars might be better spent by improving the IT infrastructure in individual schools. For instance, two desktop systems issued to a school will serve the needs of more students over a three to five year life-cycle than one laptop issued to a single student without regard to that student's access to the necessary infrastructure or motivation to leverage the powerful technology being provide to him.
These projects are by-and-large poorly conceived and poorly understood with respect to the needs of the student and do little to improve the school district's IT infrastructure or the underprivileged student's opportunities. But, during times of tight budgets, permanently funding IT infrastructure does not win nearly as many votes as spending large sums of one-time money on IT projects for the underprivileged.
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