Thanks.
Barbara

‘Starting with the end in mind’ makes sense on so many levels. Not sure about SAS’s process for Tech Budget approval, but here at ISKL I typically liase directly with the school board. I am required to prepare several budget scenarios, then explain the impact of going from scenario A (read most expensive) to scenario B to scenario C and in a bad year scenario D. Regardless of how Tech savvy the Board members are, they are only interested in ‘how does this cost saving affect my childs’s learning?’ An answer of ‘well we can’t increase bandwidth, we’ll keep the HS Computers for a 5th year, and no increase in network storage ‘ hardly generates a buzz around the board room…. ‘With scenario A students will have the network space and processing power to collaborate and work on a video project, and with the added bandwidth they can enter their movie in the internationally recognized …..”

From time to time it is good to get a reminder that the technology is not as important as its purpose.

Chad

Dennis, Stephen and I are planning our board presentation around the question – How has, is and will IT improve student learning at ISB?
We came up with same implementation framework as you (great minds!) with one small tweak. Instead of “what do we want students to do” we had “what do we want students to learn”. A small semantic shift but key when asking students and teachers to think about questions like:

How do I find and use information
to construct meaning and solve problems?

How do I responsibly use information and communication to positively contribute to my world?

How do I effectively communicate?

J

Excellent post! So cool that Doug was able to respond. I couldn’t agree more with your statement that “we need to start with what we want students to be able to do and build an infrastructure that will allow us to do that today with an eye on tomorrow.” It’s funny that when I was in the classroom full-time, standards and benchmarks were the farthest thing from my mind. And now that I’m playing a role in helping teachers integrate technology, I see how important it is to articulate the 21st century skills that we expect students to graduate each grade with.

I wonder if we sketched a few scenarios of what we want students and teachers to be doing with technology that it would inform and guide our vertical progress through the multi-year plan.

Onward and upward thru the tech plan!

Thanks for your feedback. This is exactly why I’m writing these as a blog post before creating a final document. Your feedback is spot on. Once again I was to narrow in my thinking. I love the “begin with the ends in mind” that also fits with the rest of the plan when I talk about technology reaching into everything we do in schools today. I’ll have to reword this a bit for the final paper. Thanks once again for your knowledge and input.

Thanks you master OB One

I am pleased and flattered that you were able to modify and extent my old model. I created this model about 10 years ago when I could find a lot written about student skills and even staff development in technology, but little about how a good infrastructure or administrative systems fits into the whole tech planning effort. To me it was neglected.

My only quibble with your changes here is that a single school tech infrastructure supports many outcomes, not just one. Chances are students practicing skills, good home/school communication, a robust data-mining system, and course management software are all legitimate “outcomes” served by a single network and tech department. (My model doesn’t show this very well either.) You might have to say “begin with the ends in mind”, not end.

Great stuff. Keep writing and thinking, Young Skywalker!

Doug