As the director of a teaching school and our school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) programme, my role as strategic lead for IT competes with many other priorities. As a result, I need a clear set of principles for all purchasing decisions. Quite simply, anything I buy has to have a positive impact on teaching and learning and our students’ progress.
But even when the benefits are carefully calculated, there is no guarantee of success, and my school has its own cautionary tale.
As part of our move to introduce a “bring your own device” (BYOD) scheme, we bought a trolley-full of tablets so staff could familiarise themselves with the types of devices the students would bring in to school.
The problem was, no single faculty had ownership of the room so it had to be booked and a technician had to be there to open up and then lock it afterwards. The result was that the room was seldom used, the tablets gathered dust and our attempt to replicate the BYOD experience ended in failure.
Fortunately, for us this was the exception rather than the rule. But edtech procurement has many pitfalls to trap the unwary.
1. Funding
Perhaps the most important challenge is that the funding picture has changed considerably in recent years.
When we moved to a new school site in 2009 we were able to equip all our rooms with interactive whiteboards (IWBs). Since then we have been looking for a system that allows students and teachers to continue to work interactively, but trying to do so within a radically altered financial environment.
One option was to have wireless projectors, which would enable students to display their work on a screen so it could be peer-marked or discussed by the class as a whole.
But the new climate means that any equipment we buy must be exhaustively evaluated in relation to the benefits for pupil progress. The problem is, it can take such a long time to make the judgement, and investment decisions can be delayed for so long, that in some cases by the time the evaluation is complete the technology has moved on.
This is not always bad news, however. For us, the appearance of collaborative classroom software from Google and Microsoft gave teachers access to the work of the whole class, and allowed individual students to pair up and work collaboratively on peer assessment. In the end, this was a better solution than the projectors would have been.
2. Longevity
Much of the new technology has a long life span and the temptation is to stick with what you already have, or to choose something that has been on the market for many years and is well established. However, this desire to play it safe means you can sometimes fail to fully grasp the advantages and capabilities of new alternatives.
This was an issue for me when I wanted to move away from IWBs. As they represented a considerable financial investment, I had to wait until the projectors began to fail rather than replace them straightaway. Eventually we were able to introduce interactive screens to the mathematics faculty, but only when virtually all their IWBs had come to the end of their natural lives.
Of course, sometimes you have the opposite problem, with technology not standing the test of time. We were saved from a costly mistake when we were looking for an alternative to laptops. We chose Notebooks, which at the time were very popular but which proved to have a short life span. Fortunately, we had invested very little in this technology.
I am often asked by my headteacher whether the decision I am making is going to last, and my normal response is that nothing lasts in the long term.
3. Cost-benefit ratio
It is very difficult to assess the benefits of new technology in terms of pupil progress, and there is always the danger of being overly influenced by the “wow factor” of flashy solutions. Sometimes, the more basic option is the best one. For example, visualisers can be a cheap alternative to other ways of sharing students’ work, provided they allow similar interactivity.
4. Knowledge of options
To implement what eventually became the school’s BYOD programme we needed to ensure that the wi-fi network was capable of supporting more than 1,000 devices logging on at any one time.
My understanding of the technology behind wi-fi is limited and I am reliant on our expert network manager to look for the best alternatives and create a summary of the costs, advantages and disadvantages of different solutions. To gain a good knowledge of the options, this manager attends briefings and engages with social media on many of the issues of the day, including new equipment.
Even though I trust my manager’s expertise, I have found it to be very important to take the time to fully understand the brief that is being presented when discussions about new equipment and decisions on procurement of new hardware are made.
5. Teacher training
Introducing new technology isn’t just a matter of choosing and buying it - you have to factor in time to train the teachers who will be using it, too.
For our own BYOD programme we created a three-year development plan, covering the period where we had to look at procurement, phasing out existing hardware, and introducing the programme to teachers, governors and parents.
The length of time that it took to develop champions in each faculty to promote the new technology and gain buy-in from all staff meant that decisions on hardware had to change during the process.
However, because it is crucial that staff are able to implement the decisions we have made, requiring training and practice in using the technology, it is difficult to speed up this process.
6. Staff productivity
It is important that the technology that you are contemplating adds to the productivity of teachers. It is a moot point whether IWBs help or hinder staff moving around the school to different classrooms if they are spending too much time struggling with connectivity issues!
Many factors influence the purchase of IT equipment, but it is crucial to manage rapid change and people to achieve the best outcomes for students.
David Poole is head of Hillingdon SCITT and director at the Hillingdon Teaching School Alliance in North West London
