Week 1 Reflection When I got the book “An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture,” I had a mixed feeling. What is EA? I got the feeling it’s about business, nothing relates with education field. I rarely touched the business field, so I’m really intimidated. The Enterprise Architecture Methodology is really a new concept for me. I have never learned anything about architecture and business. I’m afraid I can’t do well in this class. However, after my first week learning on my EDL 680 coursework, I have learned a lot and am interested in this class more.
I had been a Mandarin teacher in San Diego public schools for 7 years. Now working at WAB (Western Academy of Beijing). WAB is an IB (International Baccalaureate) international school in Beijing, China. Students are from around 20 different countries other than China including America, England, Japan, Korea, etc. It serves around 1500 students. It contains a lot of technology such as it has 1:1 laptop environment (for Grade 3 - 5) with wireless access across the school. For lower elementary school (K-2) students have 1:1 ipads. Every student and teacher has their own blog that they updates all the time. WAB has an EA that extends beyond technology planning, by adding strategic planning as the primary driver of the enterprise, and business planning as the source of most program and resource requirements. Its EA is holistic and serves as an umbrella or “meta-context” for all other management and technology best practices. As I talked with Casey Cosgrey, the elementary school principal; Joshua Meng, the head of IT; and Phil Cowell, the head of ICT, they all agree that the technology department at WAB is not an isolated department. It has a lot of support from the business department, the other management departments, operational department and administrations. To complete week 1 course work, I conducted interviews with WAB elementary school principal, the head of IT, and the ICT resource teachers as well as other teachers. I knew more and deeply about the EA at WAB. From Bernard (2012, p. 31) “EA is a management and technology practice that is devoted to improving the performance of enterprises by enabling them to see themselves in terms of a holistic and integrated view of their strategic direction, business practices, information flows, and technology resources.” EA= strategy +Business+technology. How does it happen? It needs a team work from strategy, business and technology department. After talking with them at WAB, I know when it has a big decision to make, they have a flow to follow: Teachers talked with the teacher coaches (the ICT resource teachers), then submit their proposals to the principals (elementary school, middle school and high school principals), the principals need to have a meeting with the senior leadership team including the director of the operation who is in charge of all the hardware budget and the deputy director, then the decision is made after all the discussion involving all the business and manage departments. Please see the form below. I also realised that EA exists at educational organisations the same as business organisations. With the education organizations change, it needs EA more to solve a lot of problems and gaps. Schools relied on and needs EA’s support on the big decisions. Otherwise, it’s isolated and not effective. There’s a gap existed at WAB last year that the new head of operation rejected the previous technology proposal and approved new ones, however, the team didn’t follow up with the teachers or provide teachers about how to apply the new proposals. This gap should be solved by the EA which connects the strategy, business and technology departments together. That’s what they are doing this year. My role as a Mandarin teacher also needs the support of EA. As the decision make up process, a regular teacher’s request or goal needs to submit to EA and they make decision together as a team with the strategy and business departments. As I'm learning more and more now, I understand the importance of EA at educational organization and wanted to learn more. References: Bernard, S. (2012) EA3; An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture. Bloomington, IN:AuthorHouse
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