To support ed tech, schools need to rethink budgets, infrastructure


Faculty and IT staff ranked limited budget as the top barrier to more tech-based learning.

As schools seek to provide more interactive, engaging, and personalized learning, newly released survey results reveal they need to radically rethink their budgets and infrastructure to support this new learning model.

Two-thirds of students want to use technology more often in their classrooms, and 76 percent of IT staff said faculty members show increasing interest in implementing educational technology.

But 87 percent of IT professionals said they would need to upgrade their infrastructure before they can incorporate much more technology in their classrooms, and almost nine in 10 faculty members anticipate problems moving away from the traditional lecture model.

In May and June of 2012, technology provider CDW-G administered a survey to 1,015 high school and college students, faculty members, and IT professionals about the trend towards new learning models that emphasize educational technology, problem-solving, and individualized instruction. CDW-G presented the survey results June 26 as a report entitled “Learn Now, Lecture Later.”

The company previously released research reports on the “21st Century Classroom” in 2010 and 2011, but it observed “an explosion of different devices to engage both students and teachers” in the last year, said Joe Simone, director of K-12 sales for CDW-G.

Simone attributed the sudden “spike” in ed-tech adoption to the ubiquity of touch-based devices such as tablets and smart phones.

“The way people interact with technology in and out of school is very different than just two to three years ago,” he said, noting that consumers now “expect physical touch.”

Schools are trying to “make more of a constant” between the technology that students use outside of school and the equipment available to them in school, Simone said.

Under the traditional learning model, the technology available at home to middle class and wealthier students often “outpace[s]” what schools are able to provide, agreed Mark Washington, director of technology for Port Huron Area School District in Michigan.

Surveyed high school students and faculty ranked laptops and tablets—two devices often available at home—as the technologies they would most like to see used more in classrooms.

“Schools need to have resources equal or better than what [students] have at home,” Washington said.

He said the “bring your own device” (BYOD) model has become a much more attractive option than the old classroom model, in which staff insisted that students turn off their devices because schools “couldn’t handle” managing so much technology.

But even a cost-saving option such as BYOD can present a huge challenge in terms of providing enough broadband internet access for all students, Washington said.

According to surveyed high school IT staff, storage/server improvements and wireless/networking infrastructure tied as the upgrades most necessary to support a change to more tech-based instructional delivery.

Washington suggested that one way to solve the problem is to set up a wireless internet connection, which reduces the burden on IT staff of managing infrastructure, is much cheaper than traditional desktop cable connections, and reaches more students.

To make possible these major infrastructure and classroom model changes, schools need to overhaul their budgets. High school faculty and IT both ranked “lack of budget” as the top challenge standing in the way of more technology in schools.

Port Huron Area School District rethought its classroom purchasing models and bought greater quantities of small mobile devices instead of just several full desktops, Washington said.

After state funding proved insufficient, Port Huron approached its community and asked for a bond. Approved in May 2011, the bond package dedicates 30 percent of its funding ($7.5 million) to implementing more technology in schools.

Without the bond, Washington said, the district would have had to integrate technology piecemeal and at a much slower pace.

Now, he said, the additional money will allow his IT staff to “push at once and stabilize the baseline” so the 10,000 students in his district’s 19 buildings will receive much more equal resources.

Another way to maximize cost-efficiency is to go beyond ordinary vendor-customer relations and seek partnerships, said Chris Gonzalez, who handles procurement and sourcing for St. Edward’s University.

With a vendor, a school merely buys products and receives deliveries—but with a partner, a school can develop a relationship over time and talk about priorities and challenges.

Looking for the right partnership is “not easy,” said Gonzalez, and requires schools to have “honest and open dialogue about what they’re trying to do.”

For districts implementing new learning models, communication is key, said Simone.

He said he often hears of “pockets of a few departments having great ideas [who] then say, ‘We’re still trying to get it done, but we can’t do it because we need XYZ on board.”

Districts need “a really good plan for everyone to rally around” and should involve strong leadership spanning from curriculum to IT, the superintendent, principal, students, and faculty, Simone said.

Schools must ensure that they have coherent internal communication across their departments and campuses: Vendors and schools work together best when the school has a clear vision of what it is trying to achieve, said Andy Lausch, vice president of higher education for CDW-G.

Once the changes to the learning model are underway, the district must continue to provide support: “This goes nowhere without good [professional development],” Washington said.

Sixty-one percent of surveyed high school faculty expressed need for “more training on specific technologies.”

One respondent asked for “technology coaches,” and another suggested that schools “fund attendance to professional meetings that focus on the use of classroom technology.”

The “Learn Now, Lecture Later” report allows school staff transitioning to the new learning model to look at schools across the country and see that they are “not that different,” Washington said.

Said Washington: “We all have the same issues; we all have the same concerns. At the end, we all just want to do what’s best for our kids.”

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