The TWAIN blog

Almost one year ago, in November 2007, Barack Obama claimed that if elected he would create a new position in his cabinet for a Chief Technology Officer. The current role under the Bush administration is called the “Cybersecurity czar”. This role was mostly concerned with defense against cyber attacks on network security. The new CTO position for Obama would be to help our “government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.” (Venture Beat article, Nov. 2007)

This past week, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was offered the chance to be the United States of America’s first Chief Technology Officer and he turned it down. His reason is that he likes it too much at Google.

I find that statement easy to believe. But who wouldn’t want to be on the ground floor of steering the government and all its statewide programs toward the Web 2.0, cloud, and 21st century??

I know there has been talk in our own state associations that they need to pick up the pace! With the push from the federal side, they may have to pick it up much faster!! Could it be that this new position will help? And what impact will this have in our schools and classrooms? To have government learning, unlearning, and relearning along with the people and for the people?

Change, indeed!

Imagine gathering the technology directors of your local city offices, hospital, local college, larger business owners, and the county together with your school technology directors. What would be your conversation topics?

I can tell you that meeting the other tech directors of our city was really great today. I call it the “Meeting of the Minds” and the “Heads of the Five Families”. There are technology directors in our city hall, hospital, college, and larger business association along with our education system who can really share ideas and resources.

We discussed similar issues with our networks and software use. We also discussed access to videoconferencing, wireless networks, and the future of cloud/Web 2.0 resources. A really hot topic for us was disaster recovery. I wonder if off-site data recovery could be held at one of these other places to mirror our servers?

I offered an invitation for them to join me at the TECHForum Southwest event in November in Austin and I may have some who want to join us there in that conversation. I gave one of them my TCEA brochure for the conference in February.

But even better, we all agreed to meet together again very soon.

Can I make a suggestion to other technology directors? Make friends with your local counterparts as well. What a great way to network and share resources. Imagine what you can all do together: http://digitalelpaso.com

This is day 2 of our technology academy for tech directors. I have to say that I am overwhelmed with so many ideas. Being new to this area, I have felt completely like a fish out of water. As a classroom teacher who has made my way up to this field, I want to give every teacher as many resources as possible. I want to freely open up all resources and push beyond the issues of administration. In other words, I have wanted to “break all the rules” and to have everyone be so thrilled with me.

I am not giving up hope on doing this but I do know there are constraints by law and state mandate for what we have to provide to secure our systems for the students. I know this and I hate to admit it. Its a struggle that will continue through this career. That is the impact of this workshop. It is showing me the stuff that I knew was out there for policy but I didn’t have a clear concept view of it all. Now I am starting to see the system and learning how to adapt it for my job. It really is better to know than to not know in our field.

So day 2 is so much better. The day is about staffing and working within a team. I have moved to a district with a great group of people but I have struggled with figuring out how to work with them and to help develop them as workers as well. I have never had a secretary nor have I had someone handle the various aspects of the jobs I have done on my own. This is a different animal entirely and I have been reading all these different “management” books without finding a good solution. I mean “The Five Dysfunctions of Team” can only carry me so far.

Today, we worked with Lori Gacey from Bastrop ISD on how to deal with staffing. So many resources!! I remember doing Icebreaker and Personality tests with my students to help us as a class work better with each other. I had forgotten to apply those to the people I work with and to help them learn to use the same tools to work with our users. What a great skill to develop a technology team to work better with people!

Five steps for what we should do in Instructional Technology:

1) Inventory of all technology and software

2) Determination of acceptable standards for downtime, repair costs, etc.

3) Assessment of teacher competencies

4) Study of how computers are currently being used in the curriculum

5) Creation of specific goals for computer use in your district

And we all have various ways of getting this done along with the support of our systems.

I tell you, I am really getting some great information that I can’t wait to start piecing together. For the first time, I am starting to learn for myself that this is something I can do. I have felt so out of place for the past few weeks in trying to figure out how other districts and technologists are doing it for their district. I am refocusing now to make it work for where I am and with the resources I have at my disposal.

This is so exciting….again!