Like many educators in my current position—school technology directors, chief technology officers, or others who have responsibility for all things that plug in, use batteries, beep, or depend on a digital network—I never imagined this as a job when I was growing up. My high school guidance counselor in 1970 did not suggest this as a career choice because such a job did not exist then. Even when I was hired by my current school district in 1991, my title was "audiovisual director," and I replaced a fellow whose primary tasks were silk-screening school logos on record players, developing black-and-white film, stocking overhead projector lamps, and supervising the guy who fixed 16mm film projectors.

Although my previous experience in education was as an English teacher and librarian, my same-age peers have come to technology leadership positions through a number of pathways, with math and science teaching being the most common. As networks and large data systems became mission-critical in the late 1990s, schools began to hire technology directors with computer degrees, often with business rather than education experience.

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