This article tries to analyze the concepts of administration and technological management applied to education, making a definition of them, in order to specify their scope, uses and activities around education.
Analyzing in the same way the work of several authors who are committed to the correct administration of these resources. The aim is to create awareness of the benefits and scope, as goals, by optimally managing these resources.
Introduction
The management and administration of technologies focused on education is presented at a time when the rise of these is at its best, the world's most important universities and educational centers already have plans to continue the development and implementation of technology, taking care to also introduce human capital that has the ability to develop and make the most of the advantages that these can provide to the educational environment; and training personnel to make them participate in the use of new technologies.
Article
Management and administration in the technologies applied to upper secondary education, is covered under the Comprehensive Reform of Upper Middle Education (2008), contemplated within the generic competences of Upper Middle Education, since they are the pertinent means for express and communicate messages and obtain information, as well as to process and interpret it.
The Comprehensive Education Reform is a great challenge facing the country, since it requires a great commitment from the personnel who work at the upper secondary level of education because it requires constant preparation for technology, as well as a change of attitude that helps to eliminate paradigms in the personnel, from the highest hierarchical level to the support personnel. So that in this way the lag that has been perceived in relation to other Latin American countries can be avoided.
Management is the capacity of the institution to define, achieve and evaluate its purposes, with the proper use of available resources, administration can be defined as the process of creating, designing and maintaining an environment in which people work or work in groups and efficiently reach the selected goals. For its part, computer and communications technologies provide a service platform based primarily on the Internet, and its components that help an organization in productive activities, facilitate the administration, processing and use of information of internal and external origin (Guevara, Arellano, Ramírez).
The technologies that make up this new system are essentially technologies based on the valorization of information, which constitutes a radical break with the previous systems, which had as a logic the substitution of human force for artificial energy and raw or natural matter for transformed matter (Smäil, 1990).Information, then, is a strong tool, combined with trained personnel.
In the National Development Plan 2007-2012, in the section on Sustainable Human Development, he cites equal opportunities for all Mexicans at the level of education, profession, and health, in the 2nd. axis the plan considers strategic to establish conditions so that Mexico is inserted in the technological vanguard. This is essential to promote the integral development of the country in a sustainable way. (PDN, 2007).
Likewise, study plans and programs do not generally include the systematic use of new information technologies as a tool for continuous learning ”. In addition to this, the rigidity of many higher education programs makes it difficult to move between the field of study and that of work, which restricts training opportunities throughout life (SENADO, 2004).
Although citing it in a practical and current environment, the administration of technologies is inserted in the classrooms through more qualified and up-to-date personnel, who not only use technology as a pedagogical tool, but as a means that facilitates learning, which through from the network of networks, the Internet, has unlimited access to information from all parts of the world, shortening distances and enriching knowledge with diverse points of view.
Technological management arises and develops within companies and its fundamental objective is to achieve a better connection, research-industry-society, which must be understood as a market relationship.
This implies understanding that this is fundamentally governed by laws of supply and demand. Technological management seeks to integrate the process of technological change with the strategic and operational aspects of the control and decision-making of the company. Thus, technology is conceived as a competitive weapon and as such, it must constitute an essential point of the long-term strategic approach. (Hernández Pérez, Brito Viñas, & Álvarez Gónzalez, 1998).
Seeing the educational institution as a company, the personnel that work there, we have the obligation to administer the technological resources that are available, and therefore manage according to the needs of the students, the resources that provide them with greater advantages When entering society as a productive entity, there is no point in managing technology from which we are not going to take full advantage.
Technological management is the instrument that links the productive sector and research-development in the technological innovation process. It requires conceptual and executive preparation and is carried out to support technological innovation processes that allow the identification of technological needs and opportunities and implies a capacity to manage technical change. On the other hand, it guarantees research activities and the transfer of their results to productive entities. (Muñiz, Valdivia, Heredia, Arias, Maderos, & Domínguez).
The administration and management of technologies go hand in hand with a third and no less important concept, technological innovation, which implies a renewal in processes, services, management change, and directly affects the human capital that works with these technologies, and which provides the institution or company with the ability to adapt to change and continue to be competitive, in a society with clear shades of globalization.
Technological management is a system of knowledge and practices related to the processes of creation, development, transfer and use of technology.
This technological management is carried out in educational institutions, since the creation, development, transfer and use of technology are processes that are also carried out in education, since one cannot remain static in the face of the constant changes that are taking place. they require as society and labor requirements evolve.
Some view this system as "a collection of systematic methods for managing the processes of applying knowledge, expanding the range of human activities, and producing goods and services" (Kanz and Lam, 1996).
Others, such as the National Research Council (NRC) of the United States, consider it to be made up of knowledge of: «engineering, science and management disciplines, to plan, develop and implement technological capabilities in the design and achievement of objectives strategic and operational of an organization ». It is a knowledge system or region (Khalil, 1998). According to Díaz (1995), it is made up of concepts and propositions about the relationships between concepts, models and theories about decision-making processes and execution of actions, related to technologies in organizations, companies, countries and regions.
The management given in a business, organizational, educational or work environment is united in one single aspect because the goal is the same: to administer and manage technological resources and human capital in order to achieve an objective, an already defined goal.
The essence of the concepts of administration and management is that both refer to a process of "planning, organizing, directing, evaluating and controlling" as H. Fayol put it at the beginning of the century or Koontz.
In the context of CINDA (García T, 1990) the following activities of technological management are stated:
- Monitoring, analysis and technological prospecting. Planning of technological development. Design of strategies for technological development. Identification, evaluation and selection of technologies. Adaptation and technological innovation. Negotiation, acquisition and contracting of technologies. Marketing of company technologies. Planning. Financing of technological development. Selection and training of advisers and technological operators. Management of research and development projects. Supply and evaluation of technical information.
Currently, the concept of educational administration tends to be replaced by that of educational management, understood as the organization, direction, coordination, budgeting, supervision, evaluation and control of resources, to guarantee quality education; where integrated theoretical and practical processes are involved -horizontally and vertically- to solve society's educational problems and needs. (Gil Rivera, 2008).
The manager must carry out the following activities according to Gil Rivera:
Write the project proposal which includes:
- a) description of the objectives; b) how it will be carried out; c) estimation of current and planned costs of the project (resources required for the project plan); d) establishing the times for carrying out the project stages); and e) supervise and review it. These activities are continuous.
Select and evaluate the work team.
Write and present reports on the progress of the same.
According to Miner, there are two great aspects in the technology-education relationship. One has to do with the administration of the technological infrastructure that an institution has, and the second is related to how students can take advantage of that technology to receive an education.
Addressing the need to manage infrastructure, in Mexico there is still a great lack of it, it is here where we face the dilemma of how to deploy this infrastructure, since various points for its acquisition can be attended, such as the expected goals or the objectives set, the cost of this also arises due to the great demand existing in the world market, infrastructure that in most cases is not acquired within the country, making us technologically and commercially dependent on other countries, which have the capacity to Providing it, and as for the educational sector, the infrastructure it already has is obsolete, not to mention the lack of trained personnel to provide maintenance. In public education there are setbacks in relation to administration,because there is a lack and access to technology is limited, due to infrastructure or lack of qualified personnel, as we mentioned before.
In some upper secondary education subsystems, there is an adequate technological infrastructure which is used by the students, since this is already implemented in their study plans and programs and, of course, these subsystems have trained personnel, since the Reform comes from the choice of staff, based on the requirement that the curriculum establishes.
“Every educational institution, in order to function well, requires specific data and the organization of that data is provided by technology, for example, information for students and teachers, course content, enrollment. Using technology, we guarantee that all students have the same access to information, programs and services when they have time ”.
Today the student is required to achieve fluency (National Academy Press, 1999) in information technology, which involves the development of a continuous learning process that requires people to acquire a deep understanding of technology to interact with information., communication and problem solving, integrating it positively as a resource of culture for future learning. (Solari & Germán, 2004).
Miner explains that, at a universal level, the challenges when implementing technology are the same for almost any educational institution, since it is always necessary to modernize the systems and have the most advanced ones.
The technology management process (Navarro de G, Romero de G., Bauza, & Granadillo, 2006) consists of 4 phases:
The perception phase. It is the first phase of the technology cycle, in which the company has a formal mechanism to become aware of the existence of emerging technologies, relevant to its needs. Some companies form interdisciplinary "research groups" that collect information by any means.
Acquisition Phase. It involves the actual acquisition of a particular technology. To go from the perception phase to the acquisition phase, it is necessary to prepare a technical and economic feasibility study, before justifying and acquiring a technology.
Adaptation phase. Virtually every company ends up adapting an acquired technology for its particular needs, for the purposes, it is necessary to dedicate time and effort to study the importance of a particular technology to the needs of the company.
Advance phase. When capital is limited, technology cannot be acquired and abandoned indiscriminately, making it imperative to improvise acquired technologies adapting them to the company's own needs.
Abandonment phase. It is the most critical phase because decisions are made regarding the obsolescence of existing technologies, (based on the product, process, information and management) the opportune moment to introduce new technologies is critical.
These 4 phases are crucial for the correct management of technologies, since they cover in their entirety the critical moments to decide whether it is time to introduce new technologies or improvise their application within the institution with those already existing.
Results
This article provides us with a more general idea of the scope that can be achieved at the educational level, putting into practice the proper management and administration of technologies, taking into account that educational institutions must be seen as companies, seeing students as clients., who must be provided with the best tools that allow them to enter society and the labor field in the best way in the so-called information society.
We also return to a very important phase of the technological management process, which is to "recycle" and reuse the technology that we have, adapting it to the needs that arise, as we are currently not exactly in a comfortable situation in terms of budgets allocated for the management of new technologies.
Taking into account the existence in the ranks of teachers and administrators of trained human capital that contributes, manages and supports the aforementioned.
Conclusions
A correct administration and management of technologies is necessary, the constant training of the entire institution to compete and be competent in a globalized world, which does not remain static and which constantly changes its structure, at the educational, labor and social level. The administration of technologies is to take a step forward of the requirements of the institution, and translate them into the correct management of the technological material that is required, performing this work effectively, since it is a variable that contributes directly to development, and requires careful intervention to carry it out successfully, management and administration should not be taken lightly. This administration gives each institution a unique touch, since it becomes unique according to needs.
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