February 9, 2012
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Summer 1993 Vol. 2 No. 2
The Context
Sidebar for Partnering: Myths and Realities
I have been asked more than once to chronicle my work in creating comprehensive corporate/education technology partnerships since 1982. This article is my first positive response. My reluctance has not been based on a desire to keep some secret process intact, but instead is due to my experience with those who pick up an article looking for a quick-and-dirty list of static “how-to” items that can be generically applied without regard to context.
Usually, the result of misapplied concepts is failure, and that causes us to turn in disdain to the dreaded “how-to” article. Possible progress is deferred or compromised; education fails to improve as it might otherwise, and teachers and students lose their opportunity for an improved environment. Those who “knew things would not work” are affirmed, and it is harder to try again. There is always a good excuse for why things cannot work.
For a decade, I have been creating K–12 and higher education partnerships that do work for all involved. That was done while working from within institutions and as an outside consultant for institutions. Thus far, I am still welcome to return to the K–12 schools and the college campuses that were involved in those projects, and the companies still do business with me. The breakthroughs in the application of technology or in new systems still work today, and faculty and students use them. However, each project was different.
Whether the partners were AT&T, GTE North, South Western Communications, Dynacom, GTE edna, Northern Telecom, the regional Bell companies, or others, the partnerships have varied with the people, the opportunity, and the local context. The University of Pittsburgh and AT&T—a partnership that resulted in the first Campus of the Future project in 1983—were quite a different time and place from the K–12 schools in Westfield, Indiana, and The America School 2000 project with GTE North in 1992.
Therefore, the accompanying article is useless unless the reader is willing to apply the ideas flexibly within a context complicated by personalities, historic practices that may or may not be wise today, risk-aversion traditions, conflicting corporate philosophies within the same company, technology change, regulatory change, economic timing, and community differences—to list just a few. I much prefer to communicate my ideas and explain some of the issues of partnerships through video conferences, which I did in 1984, 1989, and 1992. The dynamics involved with live or even interactive video conferences far exceed the static nature of the written word. While I am willing to share my experiences, I am conscious of the limitations of this article and therefore caution the reader to consider his or her context while reading it.
Articles are always too short to be comprehensive and this one is no exception. Life, careers, and education and business entities all share long-term prospects in most cases. Short-term decisions of an unnecessarily competitive (as opposed to cooperative) nature come back to haunt us over time. Long-term partnerships usually leave us with contributions on which we can reflect with pride; they are the basis for substantive organizational improvement and professional career growth. They involve some vision, some calculated risks, and a good bit of work, but this world in which we must live and retire inevitably will treat us better for our creation of sound business/education improvement partnerships. It is both a selfish and wise choice, from my experience. There are few alternatives that do so well.
Partnerships and technology are just tools for positive change in education. There are no cookie-cutter answers to complex, ambiguity-filled problems such as the challenge of improving education. I have been successful in most projects because I insisted that my clients remember this, and I have insisted that they recall that two four-letter words—“work” and “luck”—are far more prevalent in such projects than either “risk” or “genius.” I wish to be a part of the solution to education's problems, not a source of more problems.
—Ray Steele
Return to Partnering: Myths and Realities TECHNOS Quarterly article.