I’ll confess to (1) taking a psychology class in college and (2) retaining about one useful thing (give or take) from said class. I’ll use that “one thing” to make a point and try to compare technology to our life in general.
If you’ve never heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I’ll provide a link to help you learn something today. The gist of the theory is that we all have needs and Maslow represented them in pyramid fashion. The base of the pyramid consists of the most basic of physical needs such as oxygen, food, water and sleep. As you move up the pyramid, you get into more psychological needs like friendship and family and eventually up to creativity and problem solving.
Once you grasp that basic concept, it’s very easy to see applications of that theory all around us. We feed kids at school and have all sorts of support services to try to meet the most basic of needs. After all, a student can’t focus on high-end learning and problem-solving (at the top of the pyramid), if he/she hasn’t eaten in a day (food = base of pyramid). Why do religious and charitable organizations often participate in disaster relief? Well, their mission and calling notwithstanding, you can’t befriend or otherwise help a person with “thoughtful” issues without helping with the most basic needs of food and shelter. There are restrooms and concession stands at pretty much every event. We have basic needs and they have to be met before we can focus on higher-level needs. That’s the theory and it seems to hold true.
Does this theory apply to technology? I would submit that it certainly can and does. We have a monthly webcast for K-12 CIOs around the state. Our leadership does its best to update CIOs on high-level concepts during these webcasts. We use the webcast to provide awareness and it’s tough to argue that an effective CIO shouldn’t have this awareness. I’ll confess, though, that I occasionally hear from CIOs that have concerns about the webcast. At times – especially at start-of-school time – our CIOs are at a lower level of the Maslow hierarchy. They might be trying to determine what is/isn’t working as hundreds or thousands of users arrive. People can’t get on the Internet or enter attendance. Something may be wrong with the cafeteria software and we can’t process kids through the lunch line. When our basic needs aren’t met, that takes precedent over all other things… and THAT is Maslow’s hierarchy at work.
It applies (or it should) with big technology initiatives that a district might propose. At times, we get caught discussing high-level concepts like higher-order learning, “21st century learning” (a pet peeve term for me as some of you know) and when we hear of districts implementing a 1:1 initiative, our vision starts with the high-end goal. It had better be closely followed with a plan to address the most basic of needs such as funding, training, network preparedness and stakeholder buy-in and education.
Well, I would continue to pontificate about how all of this ties together, but I just got word that some of my school districts have lost their Internet connectivity. Maslow in action as a base-level need is no longer being met. Make it a great day! JR