Schools' Overworked IT Staff, Are Seen As Unfriendly to Teachers

Jim Moulton has some insights about the internal relationship among schools, ITs, teachers, and students. In a reflexive post, he quotes three posts where the experiences and data about the interaction are evident. The first one is from eSchools News, others from his own production at Edutopia. and a report from FutureEd 

Moulton concludes "tech staff is understaffed and overworked" so, "such a relationship is no big surprise" and sets up a hypothesis: If there is too much to do isn’t the natural human response to cut back, to draw in, and not to innovate and encourage creativity in the way our schools need? 

 And explains: "But hold it - one thing is missing in this report - no mention of the involvement of students as part of the solution. Formal involvement, as in a class to train IT support - complete with soft skill training in finding ways to leave the learning behind when you resolve a technical issue. Creating technology consultants instead of help desk staff. Kids who can fix the technology and effectively communicate with people.

Instead, the kids are seen as a big part of the problem - they are the ones wreaking havoc on filters and clogging the network’s arteries with video. But what if it was different? What if the kids were a real part of the solution? Here is one small example of student involvement in a Maine middle school that is part of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative…" 

Could it be the reason for the divorce between teachers' end technology?