Doug Johnson

A Cautionary Column
Head for the Edge, May 1997

“The final result is that technology aids our thoughts and civilized lives, but it also provides a mind-set that artificially elevates some aspects of life and ignores others, not based upon their real importance but rather by the arbitrary condition of whether they can be measured scientifically and objectively by today’s tools.” Donald Norman, Things That Make Us Smart, 1993.

I have spent an unhealthy amount of time this weekend designing an on-line electronic survey. After this database is finished and administered, I am hoping that the resulting data will tell me a great deal about how much our teachers use technology, how well they use it, how accessible it is to them, and how important they feel it is to their jobs. This data then can help our technology leadership team make some informed decisions. Informed decisions - what a concept!

I have to say this database is a peach. Although I am new to designing publicly viewed and used tools of this nature, I am willing to share this one with you. You may download a copy from <http://www.doug-johnson.com/storage/mankatosurvey.pdf>.  Perhaps this gift will make up for the lack of time I’ve spent editing this column.

This database will be but a single flake in the blizzard of data within which our school operates. To help manage and use all the things we know about kids, parents, curriculum, assessment, finance, transportation etc,. we are creating an information strategic plan. The need for it has come for several reasons:

1) Proliferation of unconnected databases.
In the data blizzard we have lots of individual scoopers and scrapers. (Can you tell this has been a long winter in Minnesota from the analogies?) How much of these information sources sound familiar to you? Individualize Education Plans, Student Management Systems, Report Cards/Progress Reports, Gradebooks, Resource/Facility Bookings, Library Catalogs, Curriculum Management Databases, Attendance Records, Personnel Files, and Health Profiles. If it currently exists as a paper form in our district, you can bet it will soon be “digitized.” The problem is that little of this is connected. A single child’s name may be entered in as many as a dozen separate databases, and then reentered when he advances a grade or moves to a new school. What percent of those databases have the child’s name spelled the same way? We are all scooping without a coordinated effort.

2) Increased speed of the networks.
Networks are making it practical for a single, high capacity, speed file servers to be used by all buildings in the district. One shared database will be able to share some or all of its information with smaller databases in the district. When a single flake of information about a child changes, it will change in all databases.

3) New accountability requirements of the community and state.
Accountability seems to have been the vocabulary word of the year in our state legislature. It’s probably time. Schools’ requests for new or continued funding will be contingent on more measurable data, and that means comprehensive, accurate record keeping. Both the government and parents want schools to do a better job of keeping track of how much kids are learning. This information is neutral and will be used in lots of ways some of them quite controversial: for tracking students, for comparing schools, or even for discovering and meeting individual’s needs. Like it or not, you as an educator will be asked to measure and record more and more.

Now I have long been an advocate of using good data to justify budgets, communicate program efficacy, and just plan determine if what one does is making a difference. I am really good at counting how many books are checked out, how many teachers attended my inservice or how many computers are in the district. (Sometime I do have to take off my socks when I run out of fingers.) It behooves us all to find ways to answer the question: Is my media/technology program making a difference? As Tom Peters writes: “What gets measured, gets done.” I believe it.

Yet we can’t afford to lose sight of some of the “unmeasurable” effects of schooling, library media programs, and technology.

• How do you measure the learning atmosphere in a building or room? Is there excitement, creativity and joy evident in your program? What kind of feeling does a person get when entering your school or room? Is there an eye gleam meter or a smile-o-scope and creativity scoring bubble sheets?
• How can you differentiate between children who intrinsically motivated and those who work only for a reward? How do you tell decision makers that it may well be those who love to learn and work rather than those who do well on basic skills scores that will contribute most to society? Where are the “flow”rubrics and the concentration scales?
• How do you measure the degree to which students feel they are cared for, valued and respected? And how do you quantify the degree to which students in turn care for, value and respect other in the school? Do we need a caring account code or a good deed database?

Take some time away from school and technology this summer. (If it ever arrives.) Connect with your family and friends. Read a book just for fun. Learn a skill which has no use except for the joy of doing it. Reconfirm what you know deep inside about children, what you really love about education, and why you entered the profession. And when you get back to school next fall, remind the decision makers there of Mr. Norman’s caution in the opening quote: that there are things of value that cannot be measured no matter how good the technology.