July 2004 — SETDA
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Sharing State, District Best Practices
I am a recovering bureaucrat. It is a long process, not without backsliding. However, I learned a lot during my 11 years as a bureaucrat, including how to write rules and regulations, as well as some law. More important, I learned how to help educators interpret rules, regulations and law so that they could do the best thing for their students. I learned that what may work in a suburban district outside of Houston, may not necessarily work in other Texas cities. Alternatives and flexibility become important considerations; not quite the stereotype of rule-bound bureaucracies. One of my roles as a bureaucrat was as a state technology director, which is a hard job. It's a challenge advocating for something - technology in education - that is expensive; difficult to explain; relatively new; yet another responsibility for teachers; and, in many minds, not totally proven to have a positive impact.
All the state educational technology directors have these positive bureaucratic skills, partially due to their association with the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). I wish I would've had SETDA around when I was a bureaucrat, because I often needed to talk with people who were wrestling with the same issues I was. I needed to learn how they dealt with state purchasing or other state agencies, and how they were able to get funding for technology. I needed others to work with to advocate for federal legislation. SETDA provides these networking opportunities and much more.
Similar Concerns and Different Approaches
State educational technology directors are key players in the world of education technology, and that is why we are proud to work with them to provide this special issue of T.H.E. Journal. Together, we selected four key topics related to technology and education, and SETDA selected states that were doing important work in those issue areas to write articles. Each state, in turn, asked a district to write an article about the topic. The result provides both state and district perspectives on a key issue in technology and education. Also, in keeping with our commitment to add value with extra online content, many of these articles (more than a dozen) appear on our Web site, www.thejournal.com. So be sure to read those articles on the Web as well as the selected few in this issue.
SETDA members are struggling with concerns similar to what technology directors of two decades ago had, yet the context is very different, especially with No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This special issue of T.H.E. Journal focuses on four key concerns:
1. Technology Integration. NCLB requires states to show how technology will be integrated throughout all of their curriculum and instruction by Dec. 31, 2006. It is up to the states to figure out how they will do that, and in this issue we see very different approaches explored in Maine, Massachusetts and Texas.
2. Professional Development. Ensuring that all educators are able to use technology effectively throughout curriculum and instruction is no small task. NCLB requires that at least 25% of technology funds be spent on professional development, but that is nowhere near enough to scale significant programs for all educators. North Carolina and Tennessee are targeting a similar model but taking different approaches in getting there.
