Happy Friday Reader

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How many browser tabs have you got open right now?

​I was talking with Jett Wolper from Sisi this week and he mentioned something called the "tab tax" - the cognitive load of constantly switching between systems just to get basic work done. Email here, behaviour tracking there, communications somewhere else, attendance in another place. Each tab represents a decision someone made to solve a problem. Together they've created a different problem entirely.

The problem behind this? Well it may surprise you to know that most educational technology wasn't designed for you.

It was designed for the person who bought it. The one sitting in the demo. The one comparing features on a spreadsheet. The one who might never actually log into the system once it's installed. So we end up with platforms that look brilliant in procurement meetings but fall apart when you're trying to use them on a Wednesday afternoon with Year 9.

Jett shared this brilliant story about a woman making her famous ham recipe. She's got it all laid out - the seasonings, the glaze, everything just right. Then she takes the ham and carefully cuts off both ends before sliding it into the oven. Her husband's watching and finally asks: "Why do you cut the ends off?"

She stops. "I don't know. That's just how you do it. That's how my mum always did it."

So she rings her mum. "Mum, why do we cut the ends off the ham?"

Her mum pauses. "Well, that's just how you make it. That's how my mother always did it. Let me call her."

So now grandma gets on the phone. "Why did I cut the ends off? Because my oven was too small. The ham wouldn't fit otherwise."

Three generations of perfectly good ham ends being binned for absolutely no reason. With perfectly sized ovens.

We're running schools full of cut-off ham ends. Systems that made sense once but don't anymore. Processes that survive because that's how things have always been done. Technology that requires more time to manage than it saves.

The schools I work with who've broken free from this usually start by writing a simple list. What actually takes up my time? What feels like busywork? Where am I doing the same thing twice? Then they get brave enough to ask: does this need to exist?

Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes it's yes, but differently. Sometimes it's yes, but not like this.

What are you stuck with? Or if you've managed to unstuck yourself from something, how did you do it? I'd genuinely love to hear. Just hit reply.

Shane