A 4 Step Process for Adding New Tech Across Your Whole School

As technology continues to evolve, the opportunities and challenges related to teaching with these new tools have multiplied. It is of course a school administrator’s job to deploy money, time, and energy in order to maximize student outcomes, and in many cases this means ensuring that technology is used effectively throughout the school. Given the hype around certain technologies, however, it is easy to become enamored with the latest shiny thing or tech “fix.”

This is a trap, though: Hastily adding a new app, device, or tech tool can be a drain on resources, and teaching with tech does not always result in a measurable improvement in terms of student experience. So how do you as an administrator evaluate the usefulness of a tool and ensure that it will actually be used by your teachers and benefit students? Here is a process that I’ve used in the past.

a 4-Step Tech Rollout process

1. Start with self-assessment. What is your school’s level of readiness for tech integration? In addition to the physical resources required (good Wi-Fi, sufficient numbers of devices or budget for devices, storage, a staff person to maintain and update the devices, time and money for professional development), how do your teachers think and feel about teaching with tech, in general? Convene a keen group of teachers (perhaps your librarian and a few others) and conduct a school audit or survey to consider if tech is being used or is likely to be used in ways that will justify the money, time, and effort that will be required to successfully implement a new tech tool.

You might try using the SAMR model (substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition) for this purpose. For a particular technology to be worth the time and resources, it should allow students to do something higher up on the SAMR model. A technology that augments, modifies, or redefines student learning is one that allows students to learn or communicate their learning in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before.

Ask yourself: Are teachers mostly using technology at the substitution level? An example is having students type an assignment instead of handwriting it. There’s nothing wrong with using tech this way, but you don’t need high-end MacBooks for it. And your teachers may not be ready to leap to the redefinition level and have students collaborate to design and code their own apps on Code.org, Scratch, or Tynker. I made this mistake early in my career: We invested in several portable interactive whiteboards, which I was tasked with setting up in different classrooms every few months—but many of the teachers were not even using email or showing any readiness to try out this new tool. You can imagine how often those very expensive whiteboards were in use!

Not every attempt at integrating technology has to be high-level coding or require a massive culture shift, however. At my current school, kindergarten students take pictures of their work on a class iPad and then scan a QR code on their desk to upload the photos to their individual Google folders, which parents can view. The sense of pride and independence that our youngest students enjoy, and the enhanced connections and communication between home and school, make this integration of technology worthwhile, even though this is essentially just using an iPad as an augmentation of typical home-school communications.

2. Set some goals. Given your starting point, and available resources, what do you want students to be able to do with the technology, and how will you measure its benefits?

Technology can be brilliantly leveraged to provide opportunities to develop 21st-century skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. These things can also be taught with a pencil and a piece of paper, however. What are the measurable benefits of the new tech, in terms of the student experience and what they (not the teachers) will be able to do with it, versus the costs and ongoing work required around storage and maintenance?

Set goals that center student experience, and where possible include a number or some data that can be tracked over time.

• Weak goal: We’d like to have iPads in every classroom.
• Better goal: We’d like to use iPads to implement literacy centers in all primary classrooms.
• Best goal: We are going to increase phonemic awareness by 10 percent overall in grade 1–3 classrooms by using reading apps like Starfall, Jolly Phonics, or Raz-Kids and on iPads, as part of a balanced literacy program.

3. Test and fine-tune. Start with the willing: Provide a key group of volunteer teachers with time to explore the options. These should be teachers who are enthusiastic about new learning, are willing to make mistakes, and really “kick the tires” on any new app, device, or website. Have this group report back at a staff meeting.

Be willing to accept that the particular technology may not be right for your school or that your plan needs to be adjusted. Consider all feedback, but don’t let early, uninformed complaining dissuade you from persevering with your research and your ultimate goal: improving outcomes for kids. As plans develop, be sure to also share your ideas at parent council so that parents see the value in what you are planning and understand that you and your team are modeling lifelong learning and curiosity.

While teachers are trying out the new tech tool, you can explore your board or district’s support for the app or device.

• Is there tech support or a central tech expert in your IT department?
• Is there free or paid professional development that you can procure for teachers?
• Will your superintendent or district provide coverage for a core group of teachers to become local experts on the device or tool?
• Is there funding (central tech budget, experiential learning grants, social and emotional funds, etc.) that can be accessed to support your plans and purchases?

4. Implement and iterate. Start with a soft launch: Provide early adopters with access to the tool, and where possible, provide coverage so that learning the tool is not added work. Celebrate early progress via staff meetings, newsletters, and parent council meetings.

Depending on the tool, you might also create a group of student experts who can learn along with you and eventually help the adults in the building as needed. One of my best experiences as a vice principal was running our Tech Titans club, where we trained a group of fifth- and sixth-grade students to be “tech experts.” Teachers appreciated having a student in their class every day who could troubleshoot as needed, and the kids liked being the teachers, for a change (we also gave them cool Tech Titans T-shirts).

Don’t forget to review progress and check in on the ultimate usefulness and impact of the technology at your year-end staff meeting. This will help you to set your tech budget and priorities for the following year. Finally, remember that change is hard for us all, but proceeding with the thoughtful, collaborative approach described above is your best chance of cutting through the noise around the latest tech innovation and landing on something that will truly improve outcomes for your students.