Pining for the Fjords

Originally appeared in 300 Words, 2 Minutes.

Q: When is a technology dead?

A: When you can pry it from your user’s cold, lifeless hands.

Now: it probably isn’t that bad at your school. Or, maybe it is.

I spent the better part of the day today going through boxes and boxes of old IT gunk – everything from SCSI II cables, to Centronix Printer Cables, to Bubble Readers.

Conversing with someone who is fighting tooth and nail to keep his blackboard and chalk. Gently coaxing another who is unshakable in their belief that we should continue replicating hundreds of CD-ROMs, rather than uploading one copy of our video to the cloud. Discussing why we need to keep stringing VGA and sound cables to our smartboards and projectors, rather than implementing a single cable HDMI solution.

Hundreds of small battles fought per day. Wondering if the war can truly be won.

The simple fact is: we are all comfortable with a certain baseline of technology, and our ability to wield it effectively in the classroom, or in the boardroom.

Beyond that: someone may have to die, in order for change to truly take hold.

Pining for the Fjords

So. We can boldly declare obsolete technologies to be Dead. Deceased. Gone to meet their maker. Singing with the Choir Eternal.

Pining for the Fjords.

Or – we can pragmatically realize that we must meet our teachers and staff where they are in their technological mastery, and focus instead on the goals of our teaching and instruction, rather than the uniformity and currency of our technology platforms.