How to increase the learning return for your ed-tech investments
While it’s always been important to spend wisely, in today’s economy—as school districts scramble to give their students every opportunity with limited funding—it’s absolutely critical for district leaders to evaluate their purchases carefully to ensure a maximum return on their ed-tech investment.
Involving all key stakeholder groups is essential to helping ed-tech initiatives succeed, and many school districts have found success with enterprise solutions, which, while they typically require a larger up-front investment, tend to run more efficiently in the long run—freeing up funds for other important initiatives.
With the generous support of Schoolwires, we’ve assembled this collection of stories from our archives, along with other relevant content, to help you make wise ed-tech buying decisions.
—The Editors
New site offers help with shift to digital education
A new online community that launched Aug. 22 aims to help schools and districts as they move toward digital education and implement corresponding policy changes.…
Survey: Ed-tech use falls short of desired goals
Despite budget constraints brought on by a lagging economy, K-12 schools and colleges are holding steady when it comes to ed-tech use. But they’d like to be doing…
New online community shares ed-tech best practices
Project RED, an ed-tech research and advocacy group that has been studying how technology can help re-engineer the education system, has created a new online community for school…
To support ed tech, schools need to rethink budgets, infrastructure
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…
Clark County schools to track academic, operational performance
Nevada’s Clark County School District unveiled prototypes of websites to measure academic achievement and operational efficiency during a meeting with school board members on Oct 13.…
On ed tech, we’re asking the wrong question
Does the use of textbooks lead to better student achievement? Somebody should do the research. Schools nationwide are spending billions of dollars each year on textbooks, with no…
How to fight back against devastating budget cuts
If educators are going to win back the hearts and minds of the public in support of public schools, they need to learn how to engage social media…
Study reveals factors in ed-tech success
Schools with one-to-one computing programs have fewer discipline problems, lower dropout rates, and higher rates of college attendance than schools with a higher ratio of students to computers,…
What a Business Process Analyst can do for K-12
Delivering financial savings, continuous innovation, and better execution is a must for every K-12 organization. A Business Process Analyst (BPA) can deliver that benefit and allow the…
Additional Resources
CoSN’s K-12 Value of Investment initiative
The Consortium for School Networking’s Value of Investment (VOI) Leadership Initiative is designed to support the effective use of technology in K-12 education. The focus of this initiative is to provide a methodology and tools for K-12 school leaders, allowing them to better measure and articulate the costs and benefits of proposed technology projects.
Case study: Centircity2 supports relationships at Howe ISD
The rich functionality of the Schoolwires Centricity2 platform has made it the “communications hub” of Howe Independent school District. Its pivotal role is contributing to stronger relationships, the development of 21st-century technology and collaboration skills, and increased efficiency.
PassKeys help Troy Area School District increase use of online resources
At a time when budgets are being reduced significantly, it’s more important than ever for districts to make maximum use of their existing resources. Troy Area School District recognized that a common impediment to leveraging its online resources was forgotten passwords. To resolve this problem, the district implemented Schoolwires’ PassKey Manager, which is providing authorized users with access to all online resources with just a single login.