T.H.E. Journal: White Papers

As I have discussed in the previous personal reflection on the online version of Technical Horizons in Education Journal, they have many resources available. In the past reflection I reviewed the journal’s webinars. While a bit commercial at times, I believe the webinars can be a very helpful resource for school librarians as well as teachers and administrators. This reflection, on the other hand, will focus on a resource called White Papers.

From what I can tell from looking through the resource, the White Papers are a series of downloadable case studies. There are five case studies available, four of which are from August of last year. Each case study contains an overview of a particular school district in the United States, specifically where they are technologically. Following the overview, a technological challenge the school faces is discussed. For example, the rather small tech staff at Lincoln County School District #2 in Wyoming was trying to figure out how to efficiently protect all of their schools’ computers. The problem was that they were using both Macs and PCs and could not find a program that worked on both platforms. The White Papers then offer a possible solution to the problem. They wrap up the case study with a short conclusion, summing up the main issues and resolutions.

At first I thought this would be a fantastic resource as it gives solutions to typical technology problems that a school district might face. However, when I reached the very end of the page I came to the realization that each White Papers case study is nothing more than an advertisement for some tech company. For example, the Lincoln County cast study is sponsored by Lightspeed Systems. They even go as far as to include contact information and a list of their services.
As I mentioned in my last reflection, the T.H.E. Journal webinars also had sponsorship, but it was not as blatant as it is in the White Papers. Normally this would not surprise me, nor would I care much what they did. However, I was very disappointed when I read the most recent case study. This report talks about a school district in Warren County, Tennessee. In 2008, that area was hit by a tornado which ripped up trees and knocked out power and phone lines. The school district had issues because they were unable to establish communication between schools and the district offices.

Generally, this would be a compelling story. However, the story quickly turned into a commercial for installing MOTOTRBO Control Stations on all schools. It seemed to me as I read through the case study that Motorola was taking advantage of a devastating natural disaster in order to sell product. The way I interpreted it was that they are using a horrible situation to scare school districts into buying digital walkie-talkies. This was probably not their intent, but that is how it came off to me. Perhaps I would not be so perturbed by this if it were not for the fact that I live only a few miles from Motorola’s headquarters in Schaumburg. I found it disappointing that a company that employs a good number of people in my community would do this. In my opinion, the White Papers section undermines the integrity of the remainder of T.H.E. Journal. At the very least, it should be moved out of the list of resources and into the Marketing section.