Lessons from Sisyphus in a Technological Age

Lessons Learned

1. If you build it, they will leave. Any good technology program is designed to fulfill curricular needs, whether current shortfalls or long-range desires. But philosophy aside, people design the plan and implement the program. People make it go. And people sometimes do go—to other schools, to other jobs, and to other interests. Schools must not build their system on the vision of a single beloved, articulate, and cyber-driven individual. Chances are that in a few years, he or she will move down the road, leaving magnificent equipment and no one who knows where the network on-switch is located.Build your technology plan around the present and future needs of the students, and listen to many voices. Don't build for your zealots—they're mobile—but be sure that you bring them on board.
2. One can never be too thin or too rich. I haven't much faith in the late Duchess of Windsor as a prognosticator, but for technology her theory is relevant. Any worthwhile technology plan demands lots of current and future money. A computer can be a black hole in cyberspace that knows the school's credit card number. No matter what we do, it will cost more and not just with respect to hardware and software. People—teachers, administrators, office staff—need to be trained, often at substantial expense. The cost of servicing computers is phenomenal, and the expertise necessary to fix the boxes or tweak the software is too often not in the building. At the going consulting rate of more than $100 an hour, the cost of running and maintaining computer technology in a school can give Sisyphus's heavy boulder a decidedly golden hue.A school can hire a computer guru to oversee the network, but that's an ongoing operational cost. Undoubtedly, though, more technical staff will be needed to deal with the rabbitlike proliferation of computers in the school. And the all-around expert is forever elusive. The emergency call to CompuSomething will always be necessary, and keeping the school's techno-gurus up to date will be an ongoing concern and cost.Schools can never catch up to the current model and should not feel guilty when they can't. Just when a school thinks that it has purchased a bevy of the most up-to-date computers, it finds that it has bought some very stylish doorstops. Schools cannot hope to understand—never mind control—all the variables of change in the cyberworld. Schools, however, can anticipate that any changes in technology will be expensive and that they will never have enough money handy to do everything.As for being thin, a movement afoot suggests that the desktop computer is dead and that the laptop is the wafer-thin wave of the future. I'll address the downsizing of desktop models below.
3. Enter the "Gates" of paradise. A rule of thumb—for schools and individuals—is to choose software first, then buy the hardware to support it. Schools, however, should not be dazzled by packaging and promises. They should purchase their software packages to support and accentuate the curriculum; the most current is not always the best. The newest software titles, however, are invariably the most expensive and demand more of the network than anyone can ever plan on.We have found that appointing an individual or groups of individuals to evaluate software has curbed SPF: software purchasing fever. Centralizing the appraisal and acquisition of software guards against identical or similar purchases by two departments. Our school has charged this appraisal group with devising a software implementation schedule to avoid future surprises.When it comes to software, a school usually gets what it pays for. A Microsoft platform is a good place to start, but the users—students, staff, business office—must all buy in to the program and be trained on the software. And site licenses for the software aren't cheap, which leads me back to the Duchess of Windsor's sage adage.Schools should proceed with extreme caution when purchasing a spanking new software title or when moving from a beloved DOS-based program to a new one that requires a Windows environment. At Crescent School, we have fallen prey to great promises and poor delivery, and the long-distance bills we amassed phoning the help lines of software companies could have paid off a small country's national debt. We've flown people to North Carolina to sort out our software problems, a pleasant diversion for a few days but certainly not the most fiscally responsible way to integrate technology into the school.Let someone else work out the kinks.
4. Size does matter. In their planning, schools should overcompensate when hardware is concerned. Reach as far ahead as fiscally possible. Once a decision has been made about hardware and configuration, stay the course, because temptations will arise to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Over the course of a project, many things in the hardware world will look more appealing. Remember: You will never catch up, so stop trying. Purchasing a gigantic network server with fiber optic backbone and equipping your network with scads of memory are essential. When it comes to hardware, bigger is better.
5. Think out of the box. We carefully considered the issue of desktops versus laptops. We researched what schools in our vicinity were doing, then went far afield to search out best practices in implementing technology in education. We found that each school had made a best guess and was hoping that the path it had chosen wasn't the Neanderthal branch of computer evolution.We heard all the reasons, for and against, then we compromised. We still have labs with class sets of desktops with all the bells and peripherals, such as a printer that looks as if I could drive it home, a scanner that helps the students dream in color, and a projector that throws the teacher's work on a whiteboard so that the students can correct it. We have also wired our school to allow students to plug their laptops into our network, just in case they want to work on their personal computer at school. We have a number of laptops—in a charmingly appointed trolley—for students to sign out.The middle way of blending laptops with desktops has worked thus far. It's like buying mutual funds through dollar-cost averaging. We know that we are not completely right, but we're not completely wrong either. And we like the desktops because they are eminently upgradable. Although laptop enthusiasts claim that the machines will always have space for newly developed hardware components, the internal architecture might have some limitations in the long term.
6. The more we sing together. . . . If Sisyphus had attended any team-building seminars offered in ancient Corinth, he would have realized that the way to success, especially with respect to enormous boulders, was to assemble a group of like-minded individuals to push all at once in the same direction. The same goes for any technology plan. For it to work, a school needs to marshal its zealots, its finance people, its curriculum planners, and its techno-gurus into some quasi-formal body. The goal of the committee should not be Borg-like single-mindedness; however, the group needs to reach early consensus so that at the end of the project, it can revel in the success of its vision or, conversely, collectively bewail—or act to offset—any shortcomings.If a camel is a horse put together by a committee, a school shouldn't be too concerned if the final configuration of the computer and technology program looks, despite best intentions to produce Northern Dancer, suspiciously like a ship of the desert. If the committee's members have done their homework, it will run beautifully and will get its users through the dry spells until the next carefully planned round of software and hardware upgrades.
7. Make the upgrade. For Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the hill was his lot in the afterlife. To a large extent, schools have to face a great many upgrades as they climb the hill of technological integration. Software and hardware must constantly be upgraded, of course, but other less apparent areas in schools face the incline as well. For many teachers, the learning curve will be steep, and they need appropriate time and training to use the good classroom software effectively and appropriately. Most faculties contain a wonderful mixture of technophiles and technophobes whose rates of acquisition and readiness differ considerably. Teaching the skills is difficult enough; changing staff attitudes makes Sisyphus's task look positively preferable.The school, additionally, may have to upgrade either its ethics or its vigilance. Technology is a wonderful tool, but creative students can use it in devious and mischievous ways. School administrators should discuss the pros and cons of Internet access at length with parents, teachers, and students. Crescent School students, who range from age 8 to age 18, have full Internet access only after they sign an appropriate-use contract that is countersigned by their parents, but we still have had problems with e-mail abuse and inappropriate site access. We didn't expect that it would be any different, but the possibility of problems gives the school a whole new set of ethical dilemmas. And the effort spent tracing down who e-mailed whom from what station and at what time has been remarkably time-consuming.Parents, in a different way, must make the upgrade. Many have already faced changes in their techno-lives, both at home and at work, and realize that monetary and personal costs are involved in moving along the road to cyber-enlightenment. The school must help parents realize that preparing for the wonders of the next millennium means preparing technologically, which comes at a price. A tax or tuition increase—as unpleasant as it might be—could be necessary. Still, there are as many creative ways to cover acquisition and operational costs as there are software packages; technology for the future provides a compelling case for support for any school board or development office.School financial officers might consider a technology reserve fund, although chances are that the software and hardware needs for the present will outstrip any attempt at saving for the future. It is imperative, however, that schools include a line in their budget for technology, just as they have a line in their budget for salaries. Technology is not going away, and schools need to plan accordingly, or they risk ending up, like Sisyphus, on a hill that has no end.

Final Advice