Predicting Large Scale Adoption of Technology

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post, May 7 2007 See also an article that appeared in Australia's Educational Technology Solutions journal in 2008.

After I posted some criteria in an earlier blog entry, based on my column, There Isn't a Train I Wouldn't Take, I was asked if there were specific questions I would ask to determine whether a technology or its application has a high or low degree of success. I didn't, but now I do. Find here a pdf file with what I call The LSA Predictors rubric.

 

So far for my district, I'd say this works pretty well. I ran a few different technologies and this is what I got. (Mileage may vary with your own particiular district.) 

TV/VCR/DVD S=20, C=20, R=20, U=20, A= 10 Total =90
Digital still camera: S=20, C=20, R=10, U=10, A= 20 Total =80
Data warehousing/data mining S=0, C=20, R=10, U=20, A= 10 Total =60
Blogging S=10, C=20, R=10, U=0, A= 20 Total =60
Digital video editing S=0, C=0, R=20, U=10, A= 10 Total =40
Interactive field trips using ITV S=0, C=0, R=0, U=10, A= 0 Total =10

Does the rubric work for you? How does it need to be tweaked? Should we even be trying to predict the success of a technology  implementation? How does it hold up with IWBs and iPads?

Comments

[Andrew Pass]

Doug, This is great. Thanks for producing such a wonderful resource. I'm going to take some time to digest it and hopefully send a question or two your way.

[Mike Curtin]

What about time, Doug? I think the time involved in learning and implementing a technology matters a lot to teachers. Maybe this is just an offshoot of "simplicity." But it's not just the time to learn the technology; how much class time will it take and how long before the results become apparent?

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Mike,

I think time is an important factor, as well, but it is an outcome of reliability, convenience and simplicity (at least in my weak mind). Hoping this rubric is just a starting point for others to continue developing.

Doug