Security vs Learning?

I couple of weeks ago Richard and I were in the interesting position of providing ‘technical support’ for the Learning@Schools conference. I say interesting as it really brought home to me the battle educators have in ‘taming’ the ‘IT Guys’ that control the systems in their schools.

All 1200 participants brought their TELA laptop and were asked to make sure that they that they had at least enough Admin rights so that they could connect to the venues wireless network. We saw hundreds of teachers over the 3 days and basically the story was the same …in their schools the use of Technology is controlled by the Technician or IT support firm and problems ranged from no staff PD on how to turn off proxy settings to Laptops so heavily scripted and locked down that they were virtually useless outside of the confines of their school. This by definition meant they couldn’t be used even in the teachers home for more than word processing….nothing on the net.

Surely this is ridiculous! Teachers are responsible for the education of students and they are the best at telling us what they need from the Technology is to enhance learning. Technicians are not locking down staff laptops to save the staff from themselves…they are doing it to limit the amount of work/ PD they need to do.

THE POWER NEEDS TO SHIFT TO THE EDUCATORS and technicians should do as their told ..until this happens teachers will be hamstrung in their endeavours to truly utilize this tool for learning.

Go out and start the revolution now!