Friday, December 06, 2002

A moment of your time, please. Found an interesting blog by Brian Fitzgerald (thanks to Seblogging).  His point that once web site maintenance is made so simple as web logs enable, there really is no excuse for participation by teachers and administrators.  How then do we encourage integration of the tool into the schools?  Very simply, parents and the public in general have to expect it.  If schools want to involve parents (and there are plenty of critics who contend that certain members of the education establishment does not encourage such involvement) then the conversation has to be carried out via the web.  Its the only way to accomodate everyone's time constraints while providing visibility to the entire community. comment [] 11:07:31 AM

Good thoughts Found the following on the ITC Insight Blog Factors Inhibiting Change Webtools Newsletter has a good newsletter on Factors Inhibiting Change. Kevin Cox leads with the following: Technology change is not simple. Even if a change is seen as desirable, it costs little, it helps students, it makes it easier for administration, it is little effort to teachers and it is acceptable to the community - then it may still not be adopted. What are the factors that make it hard to introduce technology change into education organizations? Lots of interesting info. I particularly liked the part on relationships - fits for web logs even though I have not found info on web logs specifically. I'm still reading! Relationships Depend on Information Access Technology enables the transmission of information. But fundamentally, the critical process is people interacting with other people. The world does not run on information; it runs on relationships. However, information enables us to have different relationships. Information is the currency of exchange in campus relationships. Information is exchanged in the classroom between faculty and students. Information is exchanged among research teams. Information is exchanged between the purchasing department and suppliers. Information is exchanged between college applicants and the admissions department. The potential quantities of information are staggering. But it is how the institution manages the information to form relationships that can yield competitive advantage. Posted by Anne Davis on 12/3/02; 5:14:00 PM from the Tech News dept. This synopsis is true for all organizations whether they are government, education or business focused.  Course, the exchange of information is a "conversation" and this conversation is what it's all about -- another validation of Cluetrain philosophy. comment [] 10:52:21 AM