Page 13 - THE Journal, October/November 2018

FEATURE | IT Trends
Five school technology leaders answer our questions on learning with tech, sustainable 1-to- 1, ESSA, student data privacy concerns and what they’d give up in their jobs if only they could.
BY DIAN SCHAFFHAUSER
Should technology be able to prove its value in education? That’s a question Melissa Dodd doesn’t see much meaning in. After all, she noted, tech has become the new textbook. “And I don’t think we used to ask about the value of a textbook for learning.” During her tenure as the Chief Technology Officer at California’s San Francisco Unified School District, Dodd has become convinced that tech shows impact daily in meeting the needs of her school system’s 57,000 students. “We see the value of the use of tech around student agency and voice and the ways in which it can help enable students to make meaning of their learning, access learning and demonstrate how they’re learning.”
To learn how technology leaders such as Dodd are responding to a number of current challenges in their schools, THE Journal recently spoke to five CTOs from around the country to understand the roles they play in helping their teachers keep up with the use of tech for learning, whether their 1-to-1 efforts are remaining financially sustainable and what impact they have on learning, what they can do as ESSA unfolds in their states, how they’re grappling with student data privacy and what they’d give up in their jobs if they could.
The responses have been edited for brevity.
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