Standard vs. flexible: reconceptualizing the efficiency of "standardization of tools"

Yesterday I spent 2 hours in total frustration dealing with the administration of my daughter's education. Her schooling has been outstanding the last year and a half, but the administration of that schooling is complex to say the least. Her school district sends her to a regional high school that is funded by 31 different school districts. The high school is really just an alternative education program. They provide the instruction, technology, and building, but her school district provides the transportation, administration of the degree, and interface with the state (i.e. regents exams, graduation requirements, granting of the degree, health records). This is unusual for the district, our state, and the educational system in the US. So needless to say, many in the school district are not informed of my daughter's status. The result is that she was told she would need to buy a ticket to the school district's semi-formal high school dance as a guest since "she isn't a student there." This is the second year we have gone through this.

So yesterday, I decided that I would speak face to face to the administration at the high school to ensure that we were all on the same page. After, I spoke with the guidance counselor at the high school program where the actual instruction takes place. Between the two conversations, some of the problems and the sources of the problems began to finally come clear.

Standardizing processes and tools for efficiency

In the case of the school district, there is a standard system within the school district. All processes are set up to capture standard statistics required by New York state. The problem? When a situation or problem occurs that does not fit the "standard", the system is difficult to adjust. Thus, my daughter's friend was assigned to two different homerooms (the first classroom where each student goes in the morning to ensure school attendence). Last year my daughter was assigned to a home room, even though she did not go into the high school building. For 4 weeks her name was called while they looked for the errant student. For two weeks, her friend's mother was notified that her daughter was not in school.

While the administration was told repeatedly that my daughter did not attend classes in the main building and that her friend WAS in all of her other classes, they could not tell the computer. Eventually the computer program was modified. However, the school processes were tied to the computer program and standards, so until it was changed there was, in fact, administrative inefficiencies.

My daughter's program guidance counselor related how difficult it was to work with 31 different reporting systems so that all of the administrative requirements for the students in the program would be accurate when they went to graduate later this year. Having 31 different systems would have been too difficult for the program to handle. And yet, the 31 systems needed to be able to conform to the programs reporting and administrative needs.

The effect of distributed knowledge on administrative systems

The old school of management based on the assembly line had specialists so that a product (or service) could be standardized, thus creating a uniform product and quality. For this to work, however, the production line needed to be linear and sequential. Much of our educational system still focuses on this linear, sequential format for instruction. Much of our management systems also look at the linear logic in production, distribution, and monitoring of products and services.

But this model does not work any more with distributed knowledge. Karyn Romeis has a good example of how this DOES NOT work in a recent blog post. What we used to have in terms of planning, now will need to be changed to something that allows more flexibility. This also requires upper management to have faith in their workers, put resources into training, and allow users to adjust computer programs and applications to meet individual needs.

Rather than the standardized industrial model that focuses on setting and measuring standards, we need to start integrating multiple approaches to problems and development of ways to measure needs, abilities, and performance that is not quantifiable. We also need to teach students how to go outside of their own abilities where knowledge might be contained by external groups. And our tools (which the next generation has already figured out) needs to be adaptable, but within a general framework which gives us boundaries within which to work and communicate.

Don't we live in a technological world?

I saw many stories about the loss of business due to the grounding of the European airlines, and thought, "Don't these businesses have ICT that they can use in lieu of sending people to face to face meetings?" Of course, this would not help the airlines, but other businesses should have the capacity to conduct video conferencing and/or online meetings through other technologies.

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I hope to upload what I am working on for my dissertation in the next day or so. Teaching my son to drive, getting the kids to and from their activities, teaching 3 courses in two locations, writing my dissertation, and handling the logistics of continuing in my program means something has to give. Unfortunately, it's my blogging (and peace of mind...driving with a 16 year old who is convinced he knows EVERYTHING about driving, except perhaps keeping the car out of a ditch without mom's dulcet tones reminding him to look up!).

Do you hoard knowledge?

My son told me yesterday on a walk that his teacher complained that he could recall the most inconsequential pieces of information and would include them on his history essays. This lead me to think about the many times people are amazed at the pieces of information that I can recall. And yet, last week when I played a memory card game with my 4 year-old niece and son, I couldn't remember where any of the matching cards were actually placed (much to my son's amusement and advantage as he snapped up the pair).

Tony Karrer has had a number of posts on effective search skills, PLN's, skills needed for knowledge workers, and skimming/scanning for information. This got me to thinking, do I hoard information the way some people hoard coffee or paper products? Am I unable to access my short term memory because:

1. I have so many useless facts in my head (such as where all of the Natural Gas Pipelines are connected in the US, including producers, distributers, and major end users) I can't keep other facts in there unless they are interesting to me?
2. I need time to sort and sift through all the facts I have that I just put new information on top of the pile "for future reference" (like the piles of readings on my desk)
3. I don't really need to remember it, but I don't want to get rid of it in case I need it in the future. Therefore, it really doesn't get thrown away (out of my memory) but is damaged because of all the other useless facts in there weighing it down. This is why I am always one card away from the correct card.

Why do we hoard?
There are two types of hoarders of material objects. The first time hoard because they were deprived as a child and there is always an unconscious fear of shortage in the future. The other type usually have an addiction or psychological disorder in which they feel more secure with the material objects around them.

Do we do the same with information? Anyone who has ever been caught short in a meeting or had their job affected because of lack of knowledge wants to make sure that will never happen again. As a result, he or she will try to find excess information and background/understanding so as to not be caught unawares (and having to admit to not knowing). Others feel comfortable "knowing" and use internet searches and time to find out more information as a way to avoid work or situations they don't enjoy (in other words procrastination).

So how do we know if we are hoarding information? How do we "let it go" so the collecting knowledge does not turn into the problematic "hoarding information"?

The social aspects of hoarding

The problem with hoarding is that consumers are taking products away from others that may need it. This creates a shortage and poor distribution of resources. If we hoard knowledge, we will are keeping it from others that might need it rather than sharing it. We also might be misusing our own skills that would be better used for both individual and group uses.

To avoid hoarding knowledge, therefore, we should:

1. Share our knowledge through social software such as blogs, community software such as blogs, and social bookmarking programs such as delicious
2. Be aware of our knowledge needs and not make impulse "searches" for information that might be interesting but really never useful.
3. Find alternative places to "store" our knowledge (or access knowledge) for the future. But limit the number of "places."
   

An interesting statistic

Today, on the Today show from Beijing, they gave an interesting statistic:

In 1999, China had 500,000 internet users
Today, there is about 253 million.

Just think of the impact this will have on the global workforce and work literacy requirements.

Our Future Workers

There was an interesting article in the Financial Times Digital Business special section. The British Government has outlined the learning goals for children in the Practice Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage. These include showing an interest in ICT at 22-36 months (2-3 years old) and operating ICT equipment at 40-60 months (4-5 year olds). As pointed out in the article, we are finding an increasing need for imagination and developing a creativity for the use of IT and development of social skills that technology helps to augment. If we are taking away "play" in these critical years, will we now need to include creativity, imagination, and social interaction as key skills needed to be developed for work literacy?

Framework to analyze the impact of new ICT

Over the next few weeks, I am going to try to develop some framework that can be used in education to analyze the impact of New ICT on curriculum and student skill sets with the ultimate goal of creating a framework to analyze the impact of ICT on multiple parts of society (businesses, the economy, politics).

I am starting on education because that is where I am working, and I can observe what is happening within my classes.

The Framework

I have already identified four categories into which ICT's can be broken down: for use to communicate, as a repository and tool for sharing and distributing information, for collaboration, and to develop networks and systems (creating communities and interdependent relationships, both long term and short term).

I am still working at what the attributes should be for the analysis. Definitely, I should include the new skills users will need to know to use new technologies in each of these categories. There will also need to be some way to analyze the impact of the new technologies on larger educational resources and policy.

Finally, a list of affordances, problems (security, needs gaps, social) and opportunities should be identified.