The Human Face of Technology - school superintendent Walter Polka - Brief Article

School Administrator, April, 2000

Ever since his days of dissertation research at the State University of New York at Buffalo some 25 years ago, Walter Polka has had a special affinity for the human side of change in education. As the superintendent of the Lewiston-Porter Central Schools in Western New York for the last 10 years, he's been especially mindful of balancing the staff's personal and professional needs as they apply to the ever-increasing use of instructional technology.

That's the gist of the article, "High Tech, High Touch," that he contributed (with a pair of university colleagues) to this month's technology theme issue in which he addresses the necessity of dealing with human fears and frustrations. Polka's work synthesizing research on effective technology implementation and applying it to the workaday world of K-12 schools has gained him some international stature.

This month, Polka is off to Potchefstroom University outside Johannesburg, South Africa, to deliver a paper titled "Teaching Educators About Facilitating Change." He's presented multiple times to the International Conference on Technology and Education at meetings in London, Paris, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Brisbane, Australia, as well as at the AASA National Conference on Education.

His insights are just as applicable to stateside audiences by the fact his school district, with its 2,600 students, is rather typical in terms of technology standing. Lewiston-Porter has a student-computer ratio of about 7:1, and about 98 percent of the district's classrooms have been wired for Internet access.

"What I've tried to show is that as humans we can survive changes in our society and do so in optimistic fashion," Polka says.

We hope his 5C's of personal needs--control, creativity, caring, challenge and commitment--can fit your circumstances, too.

Jay P. Goldman