A very interesting article that asks all the right questions about current trends in educational technology innovation. It implies the central problem which is the essential conflict of interest at the heart of institutional IT services: 1. keep the services running, 2. provide the best available technology to the institution. But 1. is in conflict with 2. IT services get blamed when printers stop working or email goes down so naturally they will prefer to stick to maintaining these basic infrastructures rather than try to innovate. Especially, since many innovations tend to disrupt basic infrastructure. There's a whole Facebook group about it run by Mark Stiles.

Who's Out Front with Technology Innovation on Campus? How can academic computing be in any way innovative when innovation no longer means simply using technology? It can't be just that, since "everyone" is doing it. And, if it's not about simply using the technology, it must be about something more, such as using the technology in educationally valuable and sustainable ways over time. Or about building new capabilities based on Web 2.0 architectures, protocols, languages, definitions, and tools.

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Who is in charge of technology innovation for education? Would that be academic computing on your campus? If not, where is systematic technology innovation occurring?