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Who's Out Front with Technology Innovation on Campus?
6/4/2008
The Web 2.0 wave on campus may have left academic computing units in its wake. Is anyone in charge of technology innovation?At the Point of No Return
The Oxford English Dictionary and the Encyclopedia Britannica will not be published in print form again. At home, I alternate between nostalgically reading the New York Times in print one morning and online the next (see "New York Times API Coming": http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/automattic_series_b_new_york_times.php). We throw out one or two boxes of books a week, painfully parting with old print friends we never talk with anymore.
Shakeup at the Core
And, on campus, the ancien regime of technology administration mutates. Central computing keeps the technology utilities running, networking and telecom is enmeshed in the national communications grid, and academic computing -- the stepchild -- has become, well, what?
Who is in charge of technology innovation for education? Would that be academic computing on your campus? If not, where is systematic technology innovation occurring?
One answer: Technology Innovation is Distributed
Part of the answer may be that just about every academic department is involved in technology innovation in its own knowledge domain. Departments may have a faculty or staff position, or part of a position, that has been dedicated to technology support for Web site maintenance, lab spaces and technology, administrative functions in the department, tech support, and education technology innovation for the department.
Web 2.0 technologies, functioning through your browser as the "client" software, offer new adventures to this emerging distributed technology constituency on campus -- these new positions and their colleagues. They check out the latest buzz-worthy sites and savor these possibilities:
- Set up a new Web site for the department in minutes.
- Add to your collaborative capabilities.
- Offer incentives for people to visit your Web site.
- Build a community for your department.
And, if you want tips on which sites to explore, check with your library.
As has become apparent in the last couple of years, technology innovation has escaped the cage and is proliferating on campus.
Who's Steering?
A few paragraphs back, the question was "where is systematic technology innovation occurring?" Who is testing, piloting, examining the value propositions, strategizing about sustainability, and assessing impact? Is anyone looking for duplication, triplication, quadruplication of effort on campus? Who is helping to institutionalize the support for popular Web 2.0 gadgets, widgets, and sites?
Web 2.0 is inviting enough that a majority of academics can and will be drawn to using some aspect of Web 2.0 for an educational purpose and therein, of course, lies the rub for academic computing units.
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