Proactive or reactive - the learning technology choice

How best to create an environment where educators feel comfortable and willing to embrace the use of technology in education is what my job is all about. There are various strategies you can employ. It's very easy to focus on the process of the particular project you are working on. So you prepare the environment (usually a VLE), show the tools, make sure everyone knows how to work the thing and look after the technical running of the space. It's important you do this for sure, but there are often larger issues that need to be addressed and it's important to establish yourself as a contributor to design, startegy and policy where this is coherent with other strategic areas of your organisation. This is difficult and messy and often fraught with problem and setbacks but it's necessary and the right thing to do. People in learning technology should not just be about processes. It can feel like tech support and, for the educator, this is exactly what you are.

I guess it boils down to a choice between whether you want to be proactive in your promotion of learning technologies or reactive. I like to be in the proactive camp but sometimes this is a hard stance to sustain for a variety of reason. One sad footnote is that there are often not enough people or enough time to be truly proactive.