What Do Bicycles and Copiers Have to Do With Student Data Systems?
Part III of this week’s Five Principles for Smarter Data Systems series–a guest post from Vincent Cho, M.Ed., former teacher and assistant principal, now a PhD student and researcher on educational data use at The University of Texas at Austin:
Education Sector’s Five Design Principles raises important questions about the technology tools we provide to schools. A lot of us think about what data can do for school improvement, but we don’t pay enough attention to the unprecedented role that new technologies play in analyzing and distributing that data. These tools have the potential to shape what we see, and thus, what we attend to as educators and policymakers.
In these design principles we continue to search for the right metaphors, and I like that. We stretch to comprehend how it is that our phones, navigation systems, and other technologies have become so interwoven into everyday life. Besides this, the edges around our technologies have blurred such that our phones aren’t even really phones anymore. So, when it comes to tomorrow’s educational data systems, we have high hopes for the malleability and richness of new technologies, knowing that tomorrow’s tools may be unrecognizable to us.
Even so, we can start with good products, but the real work will be dealing with people and what they understand about the data systems in their lives and jobs. No tool, no matter how well designed, will ever “fit” perfectly. On one hand, tools are made by people at a particular time and place, guessing at the needs of others. On the other, it is up to users to embrace or resist them; they will adapt, work around, or expand their uses in unexpected ways.
For example, my wife, in her vehement loyalty to MS Office 2003, goes