Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

Schools must be careful not to let "educational technology titans" exploit students for profit or use them to test new products. Technology should serve the educational good, not techno-corporate ideals. #StudentPrivacy #EdTechEthics

The role of school IT managers is evolving. Beyond technical support, their core responsibility is to ensure that technology integration is never achieved at the cost of a student’s privacy or long-term interests. #ITLeadership #Ethics

Managing student data is like entrusting a sensitive family heirloom to a high-tech vault; while you want the vault to be secure and functional, you must constantly audit the operators to ensure they aren't secretly using your treasure for their own profit.

A blog post, now with audio, describing common multimedia tasks in schools. Focuses on accessibility and privacy.
https://www.hackscience.education/multimedia-in-schools/

True technology literacy isn’t just knowing which buttons to click on a single system. If a student can only use one type of computer, are they really literate?

The three pillars of network security are Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. For schools, confidentiality is particularly crucial due to legal requirements like FERPA that protect sensitive student data.

Over my career, I’ve been labeled, belittled, yelled at, and asked to scale back my lessons by principals, curriculum coordinators, superintendents. They never got what they wanted.

Good documentation of your network. including a logical map and device locations, is vital for troubleshooting and upgrades. Unfortunately, it is often neglected one school networks because IT professionals are overworked

A recent blog post on IT networks in schools, now with audio:
https://www.hackscience.education/an-introduction-to-it-networks/

Bandwidth is a zero-sum quantity. If students are streaming music or video, they are consuming resources that become unavailable for other educational tasks.

Don't be fooled by cheap home setups and the enterprise-grade networks are required for schools just because you set one up does not mean you can do the other.

Educators can no longer defer entirely to IT professionals; they must understand how these systems function to support effective teaching and learning.

School IT networks are among the most complex and challenging systems to secure because they connect students and teachers to data locally and across the globe. These networks are now essential infrastructure for modern education,.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein

I interviewed in a school district. The superintendent was audibly reacting to messages on her phone and responding during the interview. At the end, I caught her eye and said, "My phone has been blowing up in my pocket for the last hour, I wonder what needs my attention next."

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question. - Stephen Jay Gould

Those leaders who fear free and critical thought among the masses are to be feared… well not so much feared as removed… no on third thought… don’t let them be leaders in the first place.

So, let’s make heros of those who smuggle books into areas where they have been banned.

I buy and read used books. I judge the previous readers by the quality of their marginalia.

I just encountered the sentence, “You can’t judge a book by its lover.” (I doubled checked I didn’t introduce another typo… the word in the sentence is “lover.”)

Is this a typo? Is it true? Is it a typo that is more/ less true than the cliche?