Heidi Rawson-Ketchum's dilemma

["Dorsty, Robin" <shdorsro@SAGHARBOR.K12.NY.US>]

Re Heidi Rawson-Ketchum's surprise and dismay at the HS principal's
response to her comment regarding technology -

Yes, I hear things like that a lot. It took me a while to figure out
where it was coming from but I finally got it. I had been assuming
all along that my administrators knew at least as much as I did about
technology; therefore they did not understood that running and fixing
and troubleshooting a network is not the  same as teaching
people what is on the server and how to use what is on the server and
when to use it and how to use what they get off it (in other words
research skills). I bet the principal you talked to knows little
more than how to launch the one or two programs he uses on a daily
basis and send documents to a printer. I was stunned when I finally
got a chance to see how little my administrators knew about all the
different of pieces of our "network" and how they interacted, yet
they were setting policy.

In fact, I found the job description you listed so absurd as to be
funny - they want a HS/MS librarian who is ALSO a full-fledged Novell
Network Administrator? I'm not sure such an animal exists, and if you
do and you're out there reading this, my hat is off to you. I'm sure
you would be the first to admit that no single person could
do both of those jobs in the same eight-hour day.

I don't know what the solution to this problem of administrator
"ignorance" is, by the way. In my district it took three years of our
trying to work without a separate "techie," with insistance from up
above that we all could basically field our own problems with a
little help from a once- a- month outside consultant before the
administration threw up its collective hands and admitted we needed
to hire someone full time.

If I were you I would run from this job! Or wait until they
realize they can't find what they think they are looking for and
repost it.                              Robin Dorsty
Robin Dorsty, Librarian, Pierson High School/Middle School
Jermain Avenue Sag Harbor NY 11963
phone: 516/725-5317
email: shdorsro@sagharbor.k12.ny.us

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