Gearing Up for Technology Planning

Preparing for a Participatory Planning Culture

Technology plans should reflect the unique culture and aims of each school, which means faculty, students, and relevant stakeholders need to develop the capacity to guide the process.

The technical and management expertise for technology planning can be learned on the job, and early mistakes need not be costly or final.  The important thing is to consciously eschew the traditional bureaucracy of public schooling and become a "learning organization" capable of moving incrementally and responding to the mid-course corrections.

This guide is designed to providing the initial scaffolding upon which small school learning organizations can construct visions and initiate a process for efficient, effective technology for teaching and learning.

Required Research

Putting technology to work in a school setting requires a Research and Development (R&D) approach. The R&D phase (called "Action Research" by some) should be chartered ("we're going to spend some time figuring out what works here") and honored (sharing results in mini-conferences with stakeholders).

The terminology and background knowledge  required for the R&D phase can be picked up through the following:

• subscribing to a monthly university or organization journal (like THE Journal)
• subscribing to a weekly trade publication (like eSchoolNews)
• subscribing to an active list serve (like EDTECH)
• attending a regional educational conference (through ISTE)

Not every member of the planning committee need do all of these things, but each should do at least one.  The "planning intranet" is a good place to post ideas and start discussions after attending a conference or reading a good article.

A Teacher R&D Lab

R&D traditionally takes place in "labs" - places set up for design and experimentation. A good lab has high-end equipment, appropriate tools (for configuring, fixing, replacing equipment), and resident technicians who can help new users learn to operate the equipment.

To support technology planning, designate regular hours for a "computer lab" to be set aside for teacher who want to explore teaching with technology together.  Set this space aside a few afternoons a week where teachers (and invited students!) can work together in relaxed and informally focussed way. If there are internet filters that prevent access to blogs, forums, and other Web 2.0 technologies, find a way to disable them for this space, during this time.

When To Start

Begin technology planning  when there are the following four factors in place:

1. The Team: A group of committed teachers willing to set aside time to meet, train and plan together, with a principal who supports their work.
2. The Expert: A technology advisor / trainer to help the teachers make the most of their time and efforts.
3. The Cash: A source of funds set aside for the effort.  If funding is limited, include seed funds for grantwriting to obtain more.  

Trying to begin a technology planning process with no available funds will frustrate participants.  There are many grants and partnering opportunities available for underresourced schools, but "outside the box" thinking may be required to establish these relationships. 

Coaching the Planning Team

Any significant change initiative, no matter how appropriate it may be to a given setting in theory, will fail without the concerted effort to make time and place for it. Regular meetings and designated team member roles (with attention to leadership, communication, and datakeeping) can maintain focus and intention.

A purely ad hoc or reactive approach to technology implementation ("squeaky wheel gets the grease") can be wasteful and frustrating, and is not the same as a planning process. For the faculty and staff of small schools, this  isn't news - and it is as true of technology integration as it is of curriculum planning.

It's also important for the process to be enjoyable - that an efficient and pleasant collaborative culture develop among this group. Teachers must be capable of restraint as well as action--there is often pressure to rush out and buy equipment to get things going, when funds might have been better spent later on as needs became more obvious.

What follow are some first issues a new technology team might wish to tackle, as they develop working relationships and tinker towards a more complete vision for technology planning.

First Issues: Questions for the Technology Planning Committee

Where to Start?

Many questions that have direct bearing on technology planning fall within the domain of the "techies" - but many more are broader policy questions that any teacher might conceivably have a strong opinion on. Here are a sampling of the kinds of questions a new planning team might want to tackle to get the ball rolling:

1. Current Experience: What have we done so far that worked?  What uses of hardware, software, and models have enhanced student learning, and why? 
2. Budget & Grants: How much money do we have to start with, and how can we get the most leverage from it? Where are the "low hanging fruit" for grant funding?
3. Equity vs. Pilot Projects: How important and urgent is the goal of providing equal access for all students and teachers?  Are pilot projects okay?
4. Departmental Needs and Readiness:  What are the priorities and interest levels for technology integration among various content areas and grade levels?
5. Student Skills, Teacher Skills:  What should all students and teachers be able to do? By when?

Answering these question will require all kinds of in-house expertise: coordinating projects, facilitating meeting, working with vested interests, writing grants, and the rest.  Unique to technology planning is the need for in-house experts in the hardware, software, and pedagogy of classroom computing.

The Need for an In-House Guru (or "Technology Turn-Key")

School districts often rely on coutside experts for their technology planning. It would be surprising if such experts were objective and reliable enough to entrust with time, space and personnel decisions on behalf of schools. Informed decisions require familiarity with each school's goals and a participatory understanding of how things get done there.

Fortunately, there are usually teachers who already function as informal computer experts, who would appreciate the blessing to act as checks against the enthusiasm of "outside experts" - and support the efforts of those experts that are appropriate for the time and place.

Individuals who are identified as the "technology gurus" have an ongoing responsibility to maintain and develop their expertise, in order to provide appropriate advice where it's needed. Readiness to become an in-house "technology guru" doesn't require a great deal of prior experience to start off, but the apprentice should be willing to be immersed in technology education for a year or two.

This "rapid enculturation" process is familiar to anyone who remembers purchasing a used car for the first time. One must suddenly learn all about financing, engineering, soundness, and resale value.

Precepts for Tech Gurus

Trade journalists offer the following advice to the staffpeople developing tech savvy:

1. Embrace and master diversity. Include PCs, Macs, and Linux boxes in scope of study.
2. Talk simply. Convey what needs to get done and how while masking the underlying technical complications. (This is hard!)
3. Read with clear purpose. Limit trade journal reading to a few highly relevant publications and read every issue. Clip relevant articles (or if online, copy them to disk). Read the editorials.
4. Transition gradually and incrementally. Work out the bugs before moving to schoolwide solutions.
5. Use knowledge-based staff training. Teach the principles, not just the rules. Train teachers to manage their own systems, to the extent they are willing.
6. Distribute management. As they discover the power of computing, colleagues will want easy access to data and resources.  Give them good software, and don't keep them behind firewalls.
7. Ensure adequate support. Establish an informal "help desk" with phone/email support.  Let support requests form the basis for training sessions.

Tech gurus need a lot of time to play and practice.  Administrators should identify tech gurus and honor them with equipment, free periods, and approval to attend conferences.  Attached is an "extra service position" request for the creation of "Technology Turn-Key Trainers" from a past school district.

Gurus Don't Work Miracles

Regardless of how savvy the technology gurus of the school are, there are bound to be false expectations placed upon them.  It is important for everyone, and particularly gurus, to guard against unreasonable demands and hopes - else teachers will be unduly frustrated, and gurus may be burned out.

Realistic expectations should define how the culture of technology planning for the school is established.

Getting Real about School Technology

Why Get Real?

One difficulty with technology envisioning is that there are two predominant cultures (or rather, cults) related to school computing: "true believers" (who think that anything you can use a computer for is worth using a computer for) and "Luddites" (who would rather we return to 18th century farming).

Somewhere in between the two lies the reality - that computer vendors are not schoolteachers and don't know what works and what doesn't in that setting, but that there are many very powerful learning opportunities computers provide. It's important to navigate a path between these two extreme visions, and "Get Real" as you envision what the implementation process will be like and require.

The Monkey's Paw

There's a well-known cautionary fairy tale called The Monkey's Paw, in which a talisman that seemingly bestows the magical power to grant any wish produces side effects that are far worse than the wished-for benefits.  At right is a chart of such "side effects" to plan against in new technology implementations, a good touchstone to explore in establishing realistic expectations. Chart links click to explanations below.

I do not mean to imply that technology is a monkey's paw in the classroom, only that it can appear so if not properly contextualized or prepared for. Its tabular form is designed to be stimulate group discussion as part of a faculty pre-orientation to technology planning and implementation.

NOTE: The Monkey's Paw was adapted from Getting Real, a "technology kit" created for IMPACT II's Teacher Policy Institute by Janice Gordon (Mott Hall School) and Bram Moreinis (Institute for Learning Technologies), written for teachers about to enter a major phase of technology implementaion. It address issues that arose in the responses to the Getting Connected Survey we circulated among five schools. These issues are discussed at length in the essay, Promises and Problems: Getting Real about School Technology also part of that kit.

Considering Community

Having agreed to steer clear of promising the moon, and before diving fully into the planning process, the technology team should wisely consider what stakeholders should be actively solicited, and how it can make best use of the wide range of community members and their capacity to support technology initiatives.

Involving Relevant Stakeholders in Useful Ways

Stakeholders Who Care About School Technology

There are many school community members with a stake in supporting and guiding school technology. Even though each may care about and be able to help with or be served by aspects of a developing plan, their involvement must be shepherded by the technology planning team of teachers and staff. It is important to identify what the opportunity for their involvement is, and what steps are necessary to support and manage that involvement, before creating and publicizing for that opportunity.

Once your school has Internet access, external stakeholders can become much more active members of your school learning community. The list below is by no means exhaustive in either groups or their interests, but can provide a framework for considering who needs to be involved when.

A caveat: while it is most convenient to bring on new stakeholders as you become ready, they need to be ready too - plan in advance for who will be involved how and when, and make sure a "public relations" plan is ready to educate everyone about what you're up to and when and how they can participate. Outside influences can be very supportive in money and time, when well-facilitated; they can also be huge obstacles when scorned.

Let The Students Lead Sometimes

Tech Scouts are student clubs and courses that empower students to  learn enough about technology to provide technical support services to their shool and community outreach to other schools through the Internet. The ethos of "service learning" and the requirement of schools to provide workforce preparation skills sets the scene for Tech Scouts projects.  In developing their various service teams, tech scouts must to learn to think like entrepeneurs as they chose what services to offer and how.

Tech Scouts was first created for Central Park East Secondary School in Harlem, where student teams performed the following services:

However you organize your students and supervise student tech teams, it's important to have a student face on the online and offline work of your school. Their enthusiasm and vision is infectious to community organizations that are eager to contribute money and time to their educational opportunity.

Another caveat: it is important to establish and settle schoolwide acceptable use policy issues before your students start advertising their own sense of appropriatness to a community which likely will contain some parents eager to justify their own fears.  Consider well what students are likely to find online and how to respond or prepare for those discoveries. Acceptable use policies can be short posted messages or long signed contracts - it depends on the nature of your community. Keep coming back to these issues as you develop your school technology vision.

The Envisioning Process

Getting The Vision Thing

If technology is to serve, rather than compete with, existing curriculaand school culture, vision should drive planning. However, the process of establishing an informed vision is messy, requiring an initial period of small, opportunistic incremental steps as faculty and staff develop savvy. Vision occurs on many levels: there's the overall vision for technology's role in the school and its communty, and there are the visions of individual teachers who know enough about technology to formulate ways they want to use it in their classrooms.

Individual visions are the substance behind the overall vision, and give it life. As teachers hold to their vision of what they want to see made possible, the technology planners must find ways to supports flexibility and, as Buckminster Fuller loved to say, ephemeralize: do more with less.

When the technology planning team schedules it's first extensive meeting to brainstorm a school technology vision, many group creativity processes can be helpful, such as those pioneered be Edwward deBono.  Process models may seem unduly "encounter group-ish," but they can help members get active and gel, breaking through the barrier of who knows more than whom. In this way, the various visions and images within the members ofthe team can be bro ught together, and a wider range of possibilities andsolutions considered.

The Forest and the Trees

A working school technology vision and planning strategy should address both the management of resources and their pedagogic functions. Consult school technology planning guides to consider all relevant aspects. You ma yhave a beautiful vision of a forest, but as you get closer, the trees get in the way. Yet the trees are the components of the forest. Understanding that many of these issues mut be dealt with in their own time, here are some questions to consider as you develop a vision:

1. What should technology-rich classrooms in the various disciplines look like (Science Labs, Multimedia Libraries, Design Studios, etc)?
2. How will the presence of machines change patterns of space use and scheduling? (machines can cause carpal tunnel syndrome when poorly placed, they changethe look and feel of spaces, they break sometimes, and there are rarelyenough of them for all students who want access).
3. How will the quality and significance of student work change when it becomes a group resource, and how will it be evaluated?
4. How should the relationship between school and society change as they are linked electronically?

Once a working vision has been established that has begun to take these issues into account, enough context should exist to move from pilot projects to broader implementation - deciding what equipment to purchase, and putting it in place for specific purposes.

Implementation: Purchasing and Deploying Equipment

Gather Data Before Making Purchasing Decisions

Before considering new purchases, existing resources and uses need ought to be polled.  An Intranet (a website where messages can be posted and commented on) is a great way to for teachers to describe and share uses. Pictured at right is one example.

Also, invite students to visit classrooms with clipboards to establish an accurate, up-to-date account of what equipment currently exists (as well as what equipment is NOT being used and needs to be repaired or redistributed).

Finally, survey the faculty about equipment and software needs.  An Intranet survey can get data quickly.  Establish immediate priorities and a wish list for later purchases.

Once information has been consolidated about what the school has, what's being done with it, and what immediate needs for repair or purchase exist, the planning committee can begin implementing its vision through three interdependent tasks: developing purchase requisitions, creating equipment deployment plans, and assisting facutly with creating project plans for their classrooms. 

Equipment Purchase and Deployment Issues

1. Inventory & Needs Assessment: get repair & wish list from teachers.  This can build good feeling AND show the school is being accountable. 
2. Datakeeping: Develop an inventory, purchase and repair database & process.This is an excellent time to draft techie students to help design and populate a database.
3. Budget: Determine a funding portion to make available - don't spend everything at once, even though there's not enough money as there is for everything you need. Save the extra for total cost of ownership (repairs, upgrades).  Think projector bulbs!
4. Repair and Recycle with Student Help: Make existing equipment functional. Students learn the "mix 'n match" school of computer repair fast and greatly enjoy the experience - if your students are too young, consider using high school interns! Don't invest staff time or repair funds in machines that are too old to make much difference going forward. You can often find donated equipment containing replacement parts.
5. Prioritize: Develop and articulate a rationale for making choices about what's bought first. Create workspaces that are ergonomically healthy - even if they cost more. Get Everyone's Input: circulate a draft purchase order among planning team for comment., and have an open meeting. It's a great time to enlist the support of parents, some of whom will be technology experts..
6. Select Software: Much of what you need is online and free, and educational software can be very expensive.  That said, some programs are well worth the spend, like Inspiration.com or Decisions, Decisions (Tom Snyder Software).  
7. Purchase and Deploy Equipment and Software: Keep track of serial numbers & placements.  Use a LAN Management program (like Altiris) to create "images" of computer hard drives that can be easily copied and updated, or consider Thin Clients if you have the infrastructure. Make sure teachers are committed to dust covers, food prohibitions, and any other abuses that may harm the school's investment. Make sure computers are placed in ways that support best use as well as maintenance access.

This is a long list, and yet leaves off what may be the central issues for establishing the importance of technology in the culture and mission of your school: integrating learning technology into the curriculum. While an initial period of ad hoc exploration is necessary before teachers gain a sense of how to use it well, there are models in place for integrating staff development, project design, and action research. 

Supporting Pilot Projects and Ongoing Professional Development

Classroom Project Planning and Support

There are excellent teachers who don't need computers. The importance of considering learning styles, cooperative learning, cognitive development, critical thinking and constructivism didn't start with networked technology. However, the classroom computer cluster model seems to suggest inquiry-based interdependent groupwork, and offers teachers an opportunity to look more closely and explicitly at their objectives and methods to support such an environment.

On the other hand, computers DO make new things possible, such as easy communication with people outside the classroom (both synchronously, as telephones permit, and asynchronously, as letters do). How do opportunities for authetic communication with real-world information sources affect the way class projects should be structured?

Computers allow student to produce higher production-quality work faster, and suggest portfolio evaluation rather than quiz-and-test methods. The work of students can directly affect each other and the world around them. How will such opportunities be promoted, managed, capitalized on?

Supporting "action research" - a more formal examination teaching and learning - as networked computing is introduced is an important task of the planning team. Below are some activities that should be considered as part of an ongoing program of curriculum development support (which is a far more accurate term than "staff development").

1. Host an Orientation: The period after new computers have entered the school is a sensitive one for all concerned (particularly parents). Share the broader vision, and help all stakeholders establish approrpriate expectations for the level of activity and support appropriate to this stage. Help teachers "Get Real" about the promises and perils of classroom computing by discussing promises and problems. 
2. Find and Share Project Examples: Invite teachers to find project examples online and share them in team meetings. Schedule field trips to other schools that are using technology well.
3. Support Project Design: Develop a system for in-house project generation, selection and implementation. An annual project development cycle is an excellent model to shoot for.
4. Offer Ongoing Teacher-Targetted Workshops: Plan workshops for teachers interested in participating in technology planning and project development. Consider also the wide variety of online courses  for teachers.
5. Find More Funding: Implement a funding strategy to purchase items left on the wish lists and expand the capacity to support teachers as their need for more computer access and functionality increases.

Student Work as Curriculum Content

One of the transformative opportunities of digital networking is that student work (as well as teacher work) can be available for use across classes, grades and years. This is one reason why a conscious and guided process for curriculum development is so important - it gains the most possible leverage from projects that work, and articulates lessons learned from those that don't.

Because of the opportunity presented by the World Wide Web to share content and collaborate, avoid proprietary solutions to digital portfolio production (such as HyperStudio or the school's bulletin board system). A school website (whether public or internal) should be used to mount and index work. Below are some issues to consider in establishing this common resource.

1. Organizing Production: Will students be primary authors of the school website? Will they be empowered to do web editing and develop their own voice?
2. Defining Acceptable Presentation: What kind of material should be online? These issues can be explored in bulletin board discussions.
3. Linking and Collaborating: Who should be linked to the school website? Web pages can connect the school to other schools and to community organizations - thus, visiting the school website gives the browser an image of the "web of connections" between stakeholders.
4. Indexing Work: What plans exist for cataloging and sharing student and teacher work products as curriculum content for other students and teachers in other classes, grades and schools? Is student work of a quality that such dissemination is worth promoting? How should student work be selected and presented for such distribution?

Take A Breath!

This guide is intended to provide enough information to get started in the right direction towards a democratic, teacher-directed technology plan. Our last page will touch on next steps: resources and issues that come to the foreground perhaps after the first few years. There are far more comprehensive guides than this, which offer more technical information, which you'll also find there.

From Pilot Projects to Schoolwide Planning

Reaching the Mainstream

After the first years of equipment purchases and classroom pilots, a transition from serving the "early adopters" to enfranchising the "mainstream teachers" becomes more and more critical. Schoolwide technology planning, rather than pilot projects, can become a major focus of the technology planning team. Again, it's important to be conservative in moving to a schoolwide support plan, since not everyone is ready at the same time, and unused machines are money wasted. Another needs assessment survey is a good idea, and based on the results, new plans for curriculum and technical support can be drafted.

Funding Technology

As in-house staff take on more responsibility for supporting their colleagues, more and more paid non-instructional time will be needed to prevent their burning out from work overload. Getting grant and district funding becomes an integral part of technology planning. Money will be needed to support substitute teachers, hiring new personnel (as technology supporters and as curriculum integrators), supporting conference registration and transportation, moving to higher levels of connectivity, and purchasing more workstations and servers to provide equitable access for students and faculty become a continuing priority as schools move forward.

Some preliminary fundrasing issues include:

1. Organize Grantwriting: Work with principal, other administrators, other schools to strategically apply for funding opportunities at federal, state and local levels.
2. Contingency Planning: What are the continuing costs that need to be budgeted for (such as repairs, upgrades, technical support)? What mechanisms ensure these costs are supported?
3. Stakeholder Participation: What role does/should the state department of education, the district office, the school board, other community groups and businesses wish to play in ensuring successful and equitable technology deployment? What kinds of support can be asked of them, keeping in mind that accepting their support means taking on their agendas?

Extensive guides and resource lists for technology fundraising are available from many publications, including eSchoolNews.

Issues for Faculty

The effectiveness of the technology planning team is an issue which should be looked at closely after the first years, by an administrator with a commitment to the process (the principal/director, or a district computer coordinator). The team may need to approach this administrator and ask for their attention and comment - but this can easily pay off in funding and facilitating support. A good administrator is schooled in keeping visions on track, and should be valued for that function. It's particularly useful if the "technology resisters" respect the administrative partner who works with the technology team.

Mainstream faculty invited to particpate need the same kinds of empowerment opportunities that the earlier adopters had, which can provide entry into the democratic process that has been ongoing. Through these issues, they can begin to get educated to a point where they can participate in some of the other schoolwide technology decisionmaking that will concern them. Some tasks and strategies which might encourage their contribution include:

1. Refining acceptable use policies for equipment use, network accounts and internet access, so that conflicts can be solved with schoolwide policy rather than individual savvy. This supports mainstream teachers who are less experienced about such issues - just as being able to "send students to the office" takes the burden off those whose disciplinary skills may be less developed.
2. Considering administrative computing applications (grading, attendance, parent communication etc.). Grade submission via electronic conferencing, for example, can greatly speed up the gathering of data - and makes it easier for teachers to consider each others' comments as they develop remediation and enhancement plans for their students. But it's important to be very conservative about such solutions - there should be a reliable and obvious advantage, else the change won't be worth the trouble of training mainstream teachers how the system works.
3. Exploring interdisciplinary curricula, bringing mainstreamers and early adopters together: Ensure faculty feel respected and supported for their own curricular goals by the vision they are being invited to take part in through the following:
   1. Arrange visits for them to and by other schools.
   2. Meet with each department to brainstorm project ideas.
   3. Make networked computers available in the "teachers lounge."
   4. Support home computer purchase by faculty through incentives.
4. Empowering students to maximize their use of technology for learning and share what they know with teachers, which will encourage teachers to support it on their behalf.
   1. Staff and promote an afterschool computer lab (if this has not yet been done)
   2. Support purchase of computers for student home use through incentives.
   3. Train student webmasters to help develop the school's website.

Advanced School Networking Issues

Many schoolwide technology issues will remain the realm of the early adopters who have learned enough about the possibilities and terminology to make informed recommendations. If they have not yet been addressed in the first year(s), here are a few major ones.

1. Standard Classroom Configurations: what equipment should be common to all classrooms? What software applications will be schoolwide, with what security system?
2. Mail System: find a Mail Server for student and faculty accounts, develop a process for managing accounts and diali-n acccess.
3. File Sharing System: choose a File Server for the LAN, develop a process for managing user accounts and dial-in acccess.
4. Scaling Up: What is the plan for successive stages of scaling up the current infrastructure? Having a 3-5 year plan ensures that no redundant costs are incurred (paying for infrastructure that will have to be dismantled once the next phase of implementation goes in).

As the by no means comprehensive list above indicates, there are many decisions to be made and issues to be addressed as technology planning goes schoolwide. An excellent guide (which can be printed out an circulated) has been created by the graduate students of Dr. Larry Anderson and his National Center for Technology Planning, which has it's own very complete website of technology guides and plans from other schools for comparative study.