Mr. Higgins’ Blog

Nov 24th, 2006 by Mr. Higgins

Anytime that content filtering is discussed form an educational technology point of view, the discussion turns into a business-like talk where money, community, and the users become the focal point. Is this necessarily negative? I definitely think that each school that serious implements technology or has an inordinate amount of technology will eventually need a discrete IT department essentially. At the k12 online conference, the presentation titled “Internet Access with Minimal Filtering” by Shawn Nutting does a nice job surveying the IT portion of ecuational technology.

I really appreciate the fact that he discusses the involvement of the teacher because I know both sides of the fence. During several summers I have worked in IT/IS departments and have seen users who are lost and user how are far advanced. Now, being a teacher, I am a user and knowing the other side of the fence, I know what to say and discuss with the technology coordinator and the assistants. Like the presenter mentioned, the most efficient way of getting things done in the IT world / education is to communicate with everyone involved. I certainly can appreciate this message.

Posted in Teaching, k12online06

One Response to “The IT Department of Education”

on 13 Dec 2006 at 6:26 pm1Shawn Nutting

Can you elaborate more on this? “I definitely think that each school that serious implements technology or has an inordinate amount of technology will eventually need a discrete IT department essentially.”
I would love for our folks to have open internet access, but the irresponsible teachers will do catastrophic damage to our program. I need to take slow steps toward open access. A few bad things and our community would shut my web 2.0 initiative down. I am slowly educating our community, board, faculty, staff and students in the hopes that we can one day have very minimal internet filtering. With CIPA we will always have some.
I appreciate your comments,
Shawn