It was a novel question.
‘What is technology?’ asked Dr. Bill Kraus, halfway through the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District Board of Trustees’ Nov. 19 meeting.
The board member held up his coffee cup and cell phone as technological examples. The trio from Techmasters – a firm that recently completed a technology analysis of the district – looked on from their front row seats in the Sierra Mountain Community Education Center’s meeting room.
The Techmasters folks had just wrapped up their presentation for the board. Their study found the district technologically lacking. One of the group’s primary suggestions for raising the district’s technology standards centered on hiring a technology guru to spearhead the district’s leap forward.
Kraus now scoffed at such a notion: ‘a messianic figure that’s going to come in and make everything alright.’
Techmasters, a San Diego firm, had recommended the TTUSD update its computer equipment and spread such equipment evenly around the district. They encouraged the trustees to become more ‘data-centric’ and hire more tech staff. The firm suggested the board act quickly, before falling further behind the technological curve.
‘Our recommendation is that you don’t dilly-dally on that,’ said Skip Sharp, founder of Techmasters.
The TTUSD board seemed unsure as how best to respond to the presentation.
‘My mind is still reeling on how to look at all this,’ said board member Bev Ducey.
There was some discussion about how best to approach this technological pickle. Should students be acquainted with gizmos and gadgets throughout their school day, or should technological wisdom be imparted primarily through specifically designated classes.
While Techmasters offered a shotgun-array of trouble spots, the group offered little in the way of a detailed roadmap to better days. Ducey said she expected more specific recommendations from the firm.
‘What comes first?’ she asked. ‘And where do we put our money first and what are the building blocks to get us where we need to be? That’s where my mind is. If we have a very limited amount of money to spend, where do we start? I just thought that’s why we hired you guys.’
Board member Nancy Gisko steered the conversation back to the foundational issues surrounding the school district’s technological debate: ‘I think we need to get back to that higher level discussion we were talking about.’
That ‘higher-level’ discussion the board was having centered on how best to approach improving the technology standards in the schools. Kraus wanted to avoid ‘sitting kids blindly in front of computers so they can move a mouse around.’
‘I happen to think we shouldn’t train our kids to read spreadsheets,’ he said earlier in the meeting.
Kraus said he felt students today were already ‘digital natives,’ having been immersed in a technologically-fueled world their entire lives. He told the board that students would be better served if provided with a ‘personal experience’ at school, before going home to play video games.
‘I think what we really want to do is foster creativity and not another generation of office workers,’ Kraus said.
In the end, the board made no decision on what direction to take on upping the District’s technological standing. Specifics will be ironed out during future meetings.
‘I think some of it will come down to ‘where are we going to get the money to do some of this?’,’ Gisko said.
