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Avoiding mistakes in digital device initiatives

deployment-mistakes

Ed-tech leaders offer key advice to help schools avoid tech mistakes

There is no question that technology, when used the right way, can be a valuable tool to enhance teaching and learning. But each year, many schools and districts make mistakes when they implement digital deployments–and these mistakes use valuable school dollars and can cause student learning to stagnate.

Three school administrators and technology leaders who have led successful ed-tech initiatives and deployments gathered during an Alliance for Excellent Education [1] and Project 24 webinar to review key factors to avoiding mistakes and ensuring a digital initiative’s success.

Patrick Larkin [2], the assistant superintendent for learning in Burlington Public Schools (Mass.), Lenny Schad [3], chief information technology officer for the Houston Independent School District, and Scott Smith [4], chief technology officer in the Mooresville Graded School District, offered advice to help other ed-tech leaders avoid mistakes and ensure the success of their digital initiatives.

(Next page: What mistakes should ed-tech leaders avoid?)

Strategy

“Strategy and vision are so important,” Smith said, adding that buy-in from all levels of leadership helps reinforce a digital initiative strategy.

“When I talk to people who are considering one-to-one or BYOD, one of the first things I talk to them about is, ‘What is your strategy?’” Schad said. “Don’t follow trends. Sit down and think about your holistic strategy. Whether you’re doing one-to-one or BYOD, it’s not about the device—and a lot of times, people tend to focus solely on that device and think magic will happen once they have it. [Focus on] instruction supported by technology.”

Securing district and stakeholder buy-in also is key to avoiding implementation mistakes.

“Districts need heavy involvement from the professional development, curriculum, and technology departments—all three are critical,” Schad said. “Principals also have to have buy-in.” Community and parent buy-in is necessary from the get-go, he added, noting that districts can’t eliminate parents from the process or bring them in at the last minute.

“Lots of times, people lead these initiatives without doing groundwork ahead of time,” Larkin said. “They talk about one-to-one as a solution, but they haven’t talked about the problem yet. They treat one-to-one as a silver bullet but haven’t done the groundwork. These are instructional resources—it’s not about technology; it’s about changing the way we do instruction in our schools.”

Leadership

Many state and district leaders make the mistake of skipping the “why” question in a digital implementation.

“What you need to consider is that as a district initiative, leadership extends all the way down to the campuses,” Schad said. “You have to answer the ‘Why are you doing this?’ question. If you skip this step, when you get into professional development and involving parents, if they don’t understand the ‘why,’ they’ll never move to understanding and accepting the ‘how.’”

Equipping all district leaders with answers to the ‘why’ questions will help when the initiative runs into problems.

“As you go down this path, there will be bumps in the road. When the bumps occur, if you’ve spent time telling your stakeholders ‘why’ and ‘how,’” they’ll be more likely to keep supporting the initiative, he said.

Expectation management

“It’s a gradual process,” Smith said. “Mooresville’s been doing this for six years. If you walk into our classrooms right now, it looks like second nature. You won’t be like that overnight. It takes a lot of time and hard work.”

Avoiding mistakes means setting up expectations, which are “changing the teaching and learning environment,” Smith said. “You can’t be successful teaching the same way you used to teach in a classroom where every child has a device and access to digital information.”

Mooresville teachers know they can take risks, and district administrators analyze real-time data that comes from instruction and academic outcomes to pinpoint what works and what doesn’t.

“The technology allows us to meet the needs of every individual student, and it also lets us meet different learning modalities. The technology is a tool—it really is up to the student and teacher to learn,” he said.

“At its core, instructional delivery is the culture of a campus,” Schad said. Adoption will not occur at 100 percent levels unless administrators and ed-tech leaders talk to all stakeholders. They also should avoid the mistake of thinking that adoption will occur immediately across the district.

Another key mistake to avoid is delaying professional development, Larkin said, and professional development should be included in expectations from the get-go.

“Whenever people are moving to one-to-one, they should be doing the professional development whether they are one, two, or five years away from implementation,” Larkin said. “You don’t need to wait to get teachers comfortable with using technology.”

Be flexible

The second most-common question Smith said he receives, after inquiries about funding, concerns how Mooresville chose its device.

“The device doesn’t matter,” he said. “It goes back to what you want to do. We look at technology as an operational expense–we’re going to pay for technology every year.”

Marrying an initiative to one device is one mistake that could hinder a tech initiative’s success.

“Whatever decision you make, it’s a short-term decision,” Larkin said. “Technology’s changing so fast and devices are changing so quickly.”

“You have to answer the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions very early on, and that informs the decision of the device. When people get married to a device…they get in trouble,” Schad said.