Purchase & Deployment | Staff Development and Technology Planning
Purchase and Installation of Equipment:
Incremental Deployment: Although most technology plans call for "a computer in every classroom", it is often unwise to purchase computers before they are ready to be used by all staff. Purchasing before readiness is the most common error made by district-driven technology plans, and often results in community reluctance to continue investment through bond issues, as occurred this year in many neighboring districts. It is estimated that for business, computers have a shelf life of 30 - 36 months at present. For schools, a five-year shelf life may be more accurate. For example, the first Pentium machines introduced in 1995 cannot run Windows 98 at a comfortable speed today. One may therefore add 1/3rd of the purchase price of a machine every year that it is not used as intended. To guard against the misspending of technology funds, accurate assessments need to be made about which teachers should receive how many computers when.
Technology Planning Committees: Building level teams are in a better position than central administrators or principals to determine whether and when to purchase computers to be used immediately and effectively in classrooms. Within a building, a principal alone may not have the time to ascertain where each teacher is in relation to instructional computing, or to juggle the many complex issues involved in deploying equipment in support of a building vision. Consensual planning by a building committee can bring enough information to enough people to make appropriate and welcome decisions about computer deployment. Technology planning committees in each school should ideally include the Principal or administrative designee, the building repair guru, computer teacher (or T.A.), librarian, teacher union representative, and classroom teachers (representing grades or departments). Committees should also decide when to include additional stakeholders (parents, student, more teachers) to increase buy-in and support for their efforts.
Phase One: With respect to purchasing machines, each building's technology planning committee should determine whether or not the faculty of a given grade or department is ready to move ahead as a unit, or whether to install computers on a teacher-by-teacher basis. At the point where every teacher has a computer, every student has access to a lab once a day, and portable cadres of rolling computers are available for classroom loan, a building is in an excellent place to provide both excellence and equity across the curriculum.
In the meantime, growth must be staged, based on building goals, readiness, and available funding. When lobbying for more funding, committee members should be able to explain how computer-enhanced learning environments provide necessary opportunities for improving student learning in their buildings. This level of advocacy and support can only come from those who themselves understand the issues and solutions, who have made the time to learn about and plan for technology integration in their buildings.
Buildingwide and Districtwide Deployment: A benchmark date may be set when completion of Phase One has occurred in each building. In the late stages, a building may decide to put computers in all classrooms regardless of readiness. Planning for such "forced use" of computers will involve commitment to extensive inservicing of faculty, and other issues regarding job expectations. Schools at this stage should adopt a series of mandatory in-services to make sure all teachers use their machines correctly. Moving teacher building-level administration functions to the LAN (such as ordering supplies, instructional planning or information sharing) can occur once everyone has access and training.
Once each building has achieved the Phase One benchmark, it can be attained districtwide. When every teacher has become comfortable using the computer in his or her charge, instructional administration procedures can be converted to digital means for all district teachers (such as grade submission, program coordination, attendance reporting or referencing of policy materials), and technology learning objectives can be adopted building- or district-wide.
In any organization, there are different levels of readiness in staff for new methods and practices. The move toward adoption of new practices is a process termed "acculturation," generally characterized in four levels. At the front line of adoption of technology are the Pioneers, those who will struggle with the new and challenging regardless of the level of support or peer involvement available. Following these are the Early Adopters, who watch and, when ready, adapt what they've seen working to their own settings. "Mainstream" individuals change when the majority of those around them appear to be changing as well, following the group norms. Lastly are those who are "Resistors", requiring a mix of compulsion and incentive to do change with the times.
The move to districtwide technology integration will not be accomplished all-at-once by a well-crafted paper document and a massive infusion of funding. A Top-Downinitiative to infuse technology into the life of our school system should occur in conjunction with the Bottom-Upreadying of staff for the management and use of that technology, and with a commensurate increase in the degree of technical Support available for teachers as they afford themselves of these opportunities. One makes best use of human capital when pioneers and early adopters are given the opportunity and support to influence those who are on the nearest rung below them, rather than by putting the burden on a few experts to serve all others. This is often called organic growth, a process more easily "owned" by those who will have to participate most actively within it. To use metaphors, top-down initiatives water all plants in a garden equally and provide fertile soil; bottom-up initiatives identify the best plants for harvest and seeding.
Continuing the garden analogy, district technology plan "Seed Money" should be set aside each year until a comprehensive ongoing budget (with, presumably, a bond issue) passes board and community muster. Seed sums (e.g. $10 per student) will be too small to support Top-Down equity-based efforts, and should be focused instead on the Bottom-Up strategies which target opportunities for maximum growth and impact. Technology seed-grants can support teachers as they are ready, funding projects that are likely to succeed and function as models. The successful development and dissemination of projects which model the best technology practices will build a critical mass of technology teaching culture in a district. However, minigrant dissemination programs require increasing "just-in-time" support of classroom technology on siteso that the research and development process becomes reliable and effective enough for most teachers to try out..
Bottom-Up: Pioneer Projects
District "technology pioneers" are teachers who have made a personal commitment to master computers as teaching tools. Their groundbreaking efforts inspire colleagues who are eager to adopt innovations in their own settings. Broadening the efforts of existing technology pioneers seems an appropriate first step toward implementing a Technology Plan in a school district seeking to get the most leverage from local resources. Drawing on the successes of their colleagues will help our teachers grapple with the collective task of technology integration into instruction. $10 per student in yearly seed money for technology integration minigrants, matched by funds from grant sources and district funding for any extra service positions such as computer club or technology turn-key (below), should be sufficient to maintain support for gradual project-based growth.
However, project-by-project growth will not meet the needs of all students, and is no substitute for the level of technology growth required in appropriate benchmarks for equitable technology use across a district. A top-down initiative to infuse technology into the life of schools, in conjunction with the bottom-up development and dissemination of, and maintained by centralized and building-level technology planning and support, all work in conjunction to achieve the goals of a serious technology plan. School-based technology planning committees and turn-keys are critical to this process, as are are the district technicians who support and train them to provide the in-time, on-site services they are positioned to.
More Projects Mean More Support
Incentives that encourage teachers to experiment with technology integration require a level of professional support and just-in-time technical support that is increasingly beyond reach of school district human resources as they are traditionally used. Contracted services will likely be unable to service the increasing demand for installation, repair and training that comes with widespread use, and there is rarely a level of commitment to staff each school building with its own in-house computer support teacher and/or technician. Just-in-time support is particularly critical for mainstream teachers who do not have a high degree of familiarity or comfort with computers, either as personal productivity tools or as classroom aids.
Reorganization of human resources to support increases in technology can be accomplished with only a moderate increase in funding. Most likely every school district can expand its base of technology training in these three areas:
Conclusion: Facilitation is the Key
The bottom-up and support efforts described above should be sufficient to develop the cultural readiness needed to maximize the impact and cost-effectiveness of district expenditures on hardware, software and networking. However, all these strategies must be designed, politicked, implemented and energized by someone who knows what theyre doing and shares, rather than hoards, knowledge, control and ownership. Though many ambitious goals are affirmed in vision-driven technology plans, the human factor - a culture of research and development, embracing risk, collaborative design, and a great deal of sleeve-rolling-up, and a willingness to restructure the way districts do business - must keep pace.
There are difficult choices to be made, particularly in under-resourced schools, in determining the focus and pace of growth and level of access equity a district is prepared to strive for each year. Technology restructuring is expensive when it fails, and high-profile boondoggles live long in the memories of those who say I told you it wouldnt work. Critical is the task of organizing, facilitating and advising the teams who will make and effect these choices. The right someone needs to be charged with pacing expectations with realities, and with providing the leadership, savvy and enthusiasm necessary to start things off in the right direction.
For more information on technology planning, visit my "Small School's Technology Planner" website. I can be reached by email at bram@netstep.net.