How do we get Technology to Work Seamlessly in School Districts?

It is no easy feat to get District Administration, School Administration, teachers, students and technology support personnel on the same page. So what do we need to do to ensure our students are getting what they need to from Technology?

At this point in my life I feel like I am old hat at the Technology in Education Game, but I can tell you that after 15 years in the industry I still don't feel like we have a handle on it. Our school district was an early adopter of the 1-to-1 framework, but despite the fact that we've had a ton of technology available in our district, the adoption rate by most teachers has been low.

I point my finger at a couple of things, both as a tech and a parent. The first is that teachers are given little Professional Development to learn how to synthesize the technology they have into their lessons. The other is that the culture of our school district is not one that emphasizes the need to use technology. In the hierarchy of learning, I would have been happy as a parent if the technology had even just been used as a replacement for the old way of doing things. Instead, my tiny little daughter not only had to lug around a ton of heavy textbooks, but also a very heavy laptop. And years later, my son--who has organizational issues anyway--had to lug around his laptop and all of his notebooks because his teachers did not accept work turned in digitally. He had to actually either hand-write his assignments or print them out and physically turn them in.

This drove both the tech and the parent inside me completely batty. I knew teachers had access to resources that would have ensured my tiny daughter would not end up getting a permanent pain in her shoulder from the weight of her backpack and would have also ensured my son would be able to turn in his work in a timely, neat manner. I know that some school districts may not have these same challenges and may have been able to overcome them, but I see more and more who are in the same boat that we are, even all of these years later.

So what is the answer? How can we ensure that the technology we implement gets used, and gets used appropriately to foster student academic growth? How can we change the culture when there is such a big mix of teachers who are at the forefront and want to push the bounds, but also teachers who have no desire to use technology at all and drag behind everyone else? Stay tuned. Maybe there are answers to be found.

#schooltechnology #districttechnology