Currently, my district does not have a list of approved websites or applications to be used by students. Additionally, to my knowledge, my district has not yet responded to California’s Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA). Teachers are permitted and encouraged to use online educational services, including those to which the district has subscribed and free online tools. As a result, a well-meaning teacher could ask her students to register to use a non-SOPIPA compliant online learning tool to complete a learning task. The information provided when creating student profiles could be used for non-educational purposes, including being made publicly available to potential predators or sold to marketing companies. This could lead to an unsafe situation for one of our students or a potential lawsuit for the district. Sharing these threats with my district's leadership team would encourage them to proactively respond to SOPIPA. To guide their response, I would advise them to follow the following steps:
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An essential skill American students to expected to master under Common Core State Standards is the ability to use text-based evidence to support claims. Educators--especially educational leaders--also need to develop this skill. Technology increases educational leaders' access to evidence which comes in the form of data and research. Data and research (which includes data) can be used to help educational leaders make informed decisions across a range of settings. For example, data is used to:
In the same way students are expected to check the validity of sources of textual evidence, it is important that leaders, across all of these settings, understand the sources of the data they use. Data from a biased source--such as a vendor or racist stakeholder group--can be manipulated to persuade leaders to support a decision which may not equitably benefit student groups. Additionally, it is essential that educational leaders remain mindful of the actual data sources--the students. Strong leaders make decisions on behalf of the students they serve by analyzing data in context. Last Friday, I participated in a #GoogleEI Twitter chat hosted by Google for Education. During the chat, Google Certified Innovators shared visions for our organizations and then named challenges that stood between us and our visions coming to fruition. Many participants shared vision of increasing technology use by students and teachers and cited funding and administrative support as challenges. Current and future business architecture can help these leaders and others implement their visions.
In California, schools receive funding based on the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) which enables educators, parents, and community members to create a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) which includes school goals, strategies to be taken to achieve the goals, and funding allocation to support the goals. This eliminated the previous practice of categorical funding of educational technology. Since funding is no longer set aside for technology, it can be easier for the LCFF funds to be spent in other areas--especially in districts with weak technology business architecture. According to the Education Enterprise Architecture Guidebook, “Documentation of Business Architecture provides a valuable tool for illustrating and communicating the business of the agency to all stakeholders” (2014). This tool is especially important for education technology leaders to consider because many stakeholders--including some educators and administrators--do not yet understand the role and value of technology in our schools. A well-crafted enterprise architecture plan would be able to clearly articulate how technology can be used to support many, or all, of a district’s LCAP goals. Presenting a business architecture plan to LCAP decision-makers would empower them to recognize the importance of allocating LCFF funds to support technology. In conclusion, in order to successfully implement visions of increasing technology in California schools, educators should use business architecture to clearly communicate their ideas with the educators, parents, and community members who control LCFF funds. Education Enterprise Architecture Guidebook. (2014, March). Retrieved February 7, 2016, from http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/implementation-support-unit/tech-assist/education-architecture-guidebook.pdf I often struggle to help other educators understand court and community school’s relationship with the county office. Five years ago, it was a little simpler because court and community schools, my district, functioned more independently from the county office. However after restructuring that occurred during a district change in leadership and the county office’s strategic planning process, many services have been reassigned to the county office and the relationship between the two has become increasingly challenging to articulate.
Now, many of the district’s business services are mostly provided by the county office. In some cases, a large percentage of service elements become additional responsibilities of district staff members, oftentimes with little support from above (administrators) or below (staff). This sometimes leads to confusion and weak implementation. For example, the district relies on one instructional coach/digital learning innovator (teacher) to meet all of the district’s educational technology needs without a technology administrator or a team of informational technology staff and/or teachers on special assignment. Most instructional technology services are provided by the county. This keeps the devices, including 1:1 Chromebooks, running, but teachers and adminstrators are not working toward a stated vision.Technology like many of the services offered by the district/coounty function with weak business architecture which decreases the overall effectiveness of the services. Additionally, navigating and utilizing services become challenging without intentional business architecture. Many of the inputs of the services provided by the district/county office are missing, hard to find, and/or unclear. Many simple inputs, such as flow charts, are missing. Without these, it is challenging for teachers to access and drawn upon services offered. Instead, many forms and procedures are sent out in piecemeal emails as text and attachments. According to Education Enterprise Architecture Guidebook, “Architecture encompasses the what, who, how, when and why of the agency’s business and describes the agency’s strategic business intent (its vision, mission, goals and strategies) and how the core functions, processes, information and assets enact the strategic business intent” (2014). Without well planned and informative inputs, the employees are often confused and left unable to access many of the services offered by the district and or county office. This negatively impacts overall district progress toward achieving should teach at business and tent because the services become an underutilized. By examining my district/county office I understand that weak business architecture is the cause of many frustrations the staff experience and--more importantly--a cause of disconnect between the many services and the students they intend to serve. I can easily identify how putting simple business architecture systems into place has the potential to dramatically strengthen my district. Education Enterprise Architecture Guidebook. (2014, March). Retrieved February 7, 2016, from http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/implementation-support-unit/tech-assist/education-architecture-guidebook.pdf |
@npriesterA collection of my learning from SDSU EDL 680 Information Technology Architecture Archives
April 2016
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