Teacher A has students blogging about current events and getting feedback from peers outside of the classroom, screencasting themselves solving math equations, Skyping with classrooms around the world to examine cultural diversity, etc.

It’s important to remember that equitable access to technology is not the same as equitable use of technology. The goal is to modernize education and empower learners to use devices to create, solve problems and answer their own questions - not simply to put a device into the hands of every student. “ Send the message that learning is the priority, and through technology we can access information, connect with people, and create new knowledge and ideas,” she says. Katie Martin, director of professional learning at the University of San Diego, concurs. Tom Murray, who serves as the director of innovation for Future Ready Schools, a project of the Alliance for Excellent Education, is known for saying, “When implementing one-to-one, we must focus on the right one in the one-to-one, and it’s not the device.” Instead, I believe district leaders must rise above the silo mentality and implement strategies for effectively working across departments. While it’s understandable that each head of a silo has different priorities, every single person’s job in a school district is about educating students. However, silos are quite important in organizations for creating a structure of accountability, the delegation of responsibility, and allowing for expertise in certain fields. It’s logical to think I would suggest that administration teams focus on removing the silos as they exist in districts today. They waste resources, kill productivity and jeopardize the achievement of goals.” OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS TO COLLABORATION Patrick Lencioni wrote in his book Silos, Politics and Turf Wars that “Silos - and the turf wars they enable - devastate organizations. In my experience working with hundreds of schools across the U.S., the instructional technology or IT department has great insight and excellent ideas for bridging the gap from technology to education, but they feel constrained because they can’t do anything about it. It may ultimately contribute to the demise of a productive district culture. These silos can lead to misaligned priorities, lack of information flow, reduced morale and disjointed decision making. It’s called the Silo Mentality and it’s defined by the Business Dictionary “as a mindset present when certain departments or sectors do not wish to share information with others in the same company.” There’s a term in the business world used to explain what’s happening here. THE PROBLEMS OF EDUCATIONAL SILO MENTALITY

They also express frustration when they aren’t invited to help with curriculum decisions, or when administrators allocate time for professional development throughout the school year and don’t include them. The conversation we then have almost always speaks to the difficulty the IT department experiences to get buy-in from administrators and teachers. I usually meet the instructional technology or IT department first because our account managers have developed strong relationships with them. We want to ensure that the district’s common goals are identified and pursued responsibly, cohesively and strategically.

One of my primary responsibilities as an education strategist was to work with administrative, curriculum, and IT departments when they are purchasing technology.

Silo city