Harris County Department of Education

Lowell Ballard, Director of IT

Information Technology and Education: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Lowell Ballard, Director of IT

Information Technology (IT) and Education are two closely related fields. The popular view that “Education” shapes minds whereas “Information Technology” focuses only on electronic devices and applications unnecessarily limits the growth of leaders in both fields.

To demonstrate the close relationship between IT and Education you only need to look at how people learn. One historical model of learning is “Instructivism”, which discusses how learning takes place by transferring the stored knowledge of the teacher to the learner. Another model, “Constructivism” says that learners actively process new information by building on their past knowledge. A contemporary theory, “Connectivism”, says that learning occurs by networking new connections. “Experiential” learning theory states that people learn by sensing and controlling the environment around them.

Interestingly, the four components to any information system are storage, processing, networking and sensors &control. Both the four components of information systems and those four educational models are reflections of the four different aspects of the human information system we call the brain. Human brain function is comprised of memory, thinking, communicating and senses & control (the nervous system).

Data dictionaries and business glossaries are tools to help in understanding, but so are choosing the correct charts and visualizations to promote more accurate and easier perception of the information to be conveyed

So, the question arises: If Educational Leadership and IT leadership are in fact two sides of the same coin, how can leaders in both areas learn from the other? Here are two examples:Educational leaders can learn from IT by teaching their students to implement the IT concept of “Caching”. “Caching” is where information that is predicted to likely be of most use in the future is pulled closer to be made the easiest to access, whereas information that is predicted to likely not be of use in the future is pushed away to larger, cheaper archival storage. For example, only a small portion of information can be memorized, more can be kept as quick references, and even more can be kept in books on the end table or desk. Less needed information can be kept on the bookshelf or at the library, and most anything can be interlibrary loaned. “Lifelong learning” can be thought of by students more broadly as continually “optimizing their cache” of information.

IT leaders can learn from educational leaders when writing reports and dashboards by understanding that the job is not done when the data is delivered, but when the end user has mastery understanding of the information. Data dictionaries and business glossaries are tools to help in understanding, but so are choosing the correct charts and visualizations to promote more accurate and easier perception of the information to be conveyed.

There are many other examples of where cross-pollination between educational leaders and IT leaders can yield helpful insights. Taxonomies of information, such as the Dewey Decimal System, start to make more sense through the lens of information system categories. A library can be thought of as a large information system. We could talk about the networking concepts involved in breaking down the barriers between school, employer and home learning. We could discuss how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is modeling human education and how the Internet of Things (IoT) is arguably focused on the least utilized area in IT systems, sensors and controls.

So, educational leaders and IT leaders of the world unite! Or at very least understand that we are each working towards similar goals, so we have a lot to learn from each other.

The articles from these contributors are based on their personal expertise and viewpoints, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their employers or affiliated organizations.