Technology Decisions Are Difficult

I spent the better part of today in meetings almost entirely devoted to technology. When we passed the tech levy two years ago I would never have guessed the amount of time I and others in our office would personally spend on this topic. Why? I struggle to answer, but know that it has much to do with the fact that we have more revenue then ever before, that we want this revenue stream to continue in the future, that technology has the potential to support implementation of Classroom 10 learning, and that we must find ways to bring the student's personal environment into our school environments.

I believe it also has a great deal to do with the need to integrate the work of what has historically been two silos, those that create and operate the back end and those that support teachers in classrooms. When we had little revenue the need for collaboration was not great. Today, the need is essential. These changes are not easy, but we have made much positive movement through our Tech Fusion work by creating the need for collaboration and through the informal conversations necessary to support implementation of the various projects in the district. These fusion meetings have been both productive and at times difficult, but the two groups are committed and the traditional attributes of a silo are being replaced by the attributes of a team.

These issues, however, don't seem to cause anywhere near the difficulty that we are experiencing in trying to put in place support and decision making structures. Each time we consider a model and share it we end up either starting over or making significant changes that again require reflection and thought. There seems to be a lot of the chicken and egg stuff that emerges in our conversations as well as questions such as these.

• What level of support is needed for teachers to understand and use the purchased tools efficiently and effectively?
• How do we coordinate the work of the multiple support layers that results in an efficient system of support?
• What do we buy and why?
• How do we become effective at making decisions that maximize our dollars to increase the level of technology use in all schools in our system?
• Who needs to be engaged in these decisions on what to buy and the priority for implementation?
• What is an appropriate balance between back end and classroom projects?
• What data do we need before we make decisions to scale up current projects?
• How much control do we need at the system level over access with district and with personal devices?

Finding answers to these questions has eluded us thus far, but we are being persistent and have one more model to unveil at our Technology Summit meeting on the 21st. We are looking forward to teacher feedback and guidance as we create structures to guide this work in the future. If you have answers to these questions please let us know as I and probably Dawn and Lori would welcome the opportunity to actually spend less time on this topic.

After all this, the thing that continues to be frustrating is knowing that however we answer these questions and make decisions there will be some who disagree and choose not to understand, agree with, and support them. The stakes are high because of the potential to support learning and the need for our community to see and value this potential for continued support. We must find ways to achieve our needs through our belief in consensus (at what level of engagement?) and placing these decisions in a system context. This work will take all of our PLC skills.