Voting on technology purchases requires transparency

Getting everyone on the same page is no easy task. It requires collaboration, compromise, and hard conversations about how and why we do the things we do in classrooms. We need to create a shared understanding of the work we do and develop transparency around our processes. Ultimately, we need a philosophy to build on. At Parkway, we call these our Instructional Technology Commitments, and they guide our decisions when it comes to how and why we use and purchase technology for our students.

Without a philosophy or guiding documents, districts may make technology decisions based on the current sentiment of stakeholders. Instead, it is important to identify organizational commonalities.

Ask these important questions when creating your Ed Tech document

A good place to start is to recruit people from the school community who represent all the different groups that might be involved in the decision-making and input process. This can include teachers, building administrators, librarians, district curriculum leaders, technology staff and students, as well as parents and local industry partners. Not every single stakeholder can be included, but ensuring that a variety of voices are represented at the discussion table will allow for a more reliable and credible philosophical stance.

DISCOVER: Select essential instructional technology to reduce digital overload in grades K–12.

You are looking for something to lean on, something you can point to and say, “This is why we made this decision.” When you are together, look for common ground and consider some guiding questions, such as:

• What should children do with technology? Would our students agree with our answers?
• What skills must students have when they leave our schools?
• What experiences do we want to provide students with to prepare them for the world outside our district?
• What measures do we need to take to ensure students’ online safety?
• What existing guidelines do we need to follow?

These questions alone won’t produce a definitive document, but they’re a good way to gauge the sentiment of your group and find out what’s important to the community.

Community support encourages leadership involvement

After you have a draft, reconvene the group to get feedback and make sure you have captured all member input. Then involve school leaders who may make decisions about technology use and purchases. These are the people who need to buy into the overall philosophy when making their own decisions. The more people who provide feedback (whether or not it is used in the final document), the more representative the document will be of the entire community.

Whether you call your finished document technology commitments, policies, or philosophy, the main point is that you know you have created a transparent process and have community-supported rationale for your technology decisions.

REGARD: A school district’s IT and curriculum teams work together.