Almost 30 years ago when I started in Educational Technology, the job description for being a school tech leader was vague. Personally, my biggest qualification was that I knew more about computers/technology than anyone else at the school. I soon learned that many of my peers were in the same boat. Some of us were teachers with an interest in technology, while others were in the tech industry and looking for something more fulfilling. Today, the job description is still often vague, but what has become clear is the work of those in educational technology requires constant flexibility, growth, and the need to understand the individual components included in today’s educational technology landscape. It’s a lot like an orchestra, with the Technology Director as the conductor.
You might ask me why I am using a conductor as my analogy. - besides the fact that I have always wanted to wear a tuxedo with tails and wave that cool baton - we’re doing exactly that: conducting an orchestra! While our individual orchestras have differing instruments (we don’t all have the same oversight of varying school systems), we are all tasked with making sure that our schools networks are stable, our users are leveraging technology, and our ancillary systems are connecting. What is also parallel to the conductor’s position is the fact that most users don’t understand the breadth of our work and even when we do explain, most folks don’t “speak tech.” So, let me dig a bit deeper into this and explain why we are all conductors of our own technological orchestras.
According to NPR’s Class Notes video, “the conductor is the person who keeps all the musicians of the orchestra and their different instruments together and on track…” If you swap out the word, conductor for tech leader, the word musicians for the term tech team, and the instruments for technologies, you have the root of what we do. Combine that with the idea of a musical score, which for us is the day to day school’s operations, and the analogy fits.. We keep the network running at adequate speeds, we ensure equipment is working, we see to it that communications flow, bells ring, and so much more. While that is the nuts and bolts of it, we also need to understand the emotional connection people have with technology. Music has the power to move us, and I say, technology does as well. How many of us have had a frustrated user or someone who is scared of new technology? Musical conductors understand how the music will move the audience; likewise, a tech leader needs to know how tech might move the users in their school and how to adjust so that at the end of each day our users trust our guidance, and feel safe using the technology..
Now, let's think about all of those instruments in an orchestra. A conductor knows how each instrument is supposed to sound, both alone and together, and how those sounds will affect the audience. Once again, let's change the word instruments in an orchestra to technology in an educational ecosystem. As tech leaders, we need to know what each piece of technology is supposed to do, how it will work with other pieces of technology, and its impact on the entire technological ecosystem and our users.
And perhaps my favorite part – all of the hand waving that a conductor does. If you've ever seen me speak, especially when I’m emotional about something, you will absolutely see my hands flailing around at a frenetic pace. Each of those hand motions a conductor makes have a specific purpose. They help keep rhythm, maintain the beat, and signal when instruments should start and stop. Similarly, the making decisions as tech leaders including how the tech office functions, how and when services run, when networks are available to our students, how quickly issues get fixed, and of course how we communicate out, we have the impact of keeping the technology running smoothly and as it should.
Can you hear it now? The complicated score of our day to day lives as technology leaders is one that is both a balancing act and one that takes constant training and practice. The instruments in our ecosystems change frequently, yet we need to know what each one should do and how it should work with our other systems and within the ecosystem as a whole. We need to guide our tech teams and keep pace with the pace of education and the world around us. We need to learn new instruments and retire old ones. Some days I hear Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and my day seems like a scene out of Disney’s Fantasia while other days I hear Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and my day seems like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Either way, our hands keep waving, our musicians keep playing, and our instruments continue to make beautiful music all while we make it seem effortless.