Planning with Technology

I thought the Planning with Technology lecture brought up some good points.  Very interesting was the question, "How do we incorporate technology effectively to overcome barriers, without creating more?"  Although I've seem plenty of ways that technology has enhanced and eased learning, I've also seen how technology can sometimes complicate things.  For instance, at Friends Seminary they having to deal with plenty of technology issues, including students' game playing on iPads, shattered iPad screens, network problems, SMART board problems, software compatibility problems, eBook book registration problems, and file saving problems (files are sometimes saved locally, sometimes saved on the network, and sometimes saved in the cloud).  On top of it all, the technology leaders are often strained for time.  Indeed, sometimes there simply seems to be too much technology to learn.  As a future technology leader myself, I'm starting to believe that the simplest solution is almost always the best one.  For instance, I'm already wondering if school networks are necessary.  Can't students simply always upload their files to a cloud such as Google Docs?

As for students with special needs, the importance of keeping things simple is even more important.  A student such as Jack who has limited working memory and ADHD could easily have his education hurt through poor, disorganized, depersonalized, or redundant integration of technology.