Getting the most from your tech dollar 4: Right tool for the right job

Over the next few days, I'll be addressing some strategies school districts use to get the most from their technology dollars. See the full list here. Any budget stretching strategies you're willing to share?

4. The right tool for the right job: avoid buying a new semi when a used pickup will do.

For as long as I can remember, the rule of thumb for buying a computer or other piece of technology has been: buy as powerful a machine as you can afford to keep it from becoming rapidly obsolescent. And this has been easy since technology vendors are always happy to upsell on any purchase. You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much bandwidth was my motto.

But the model is changing. Computer speed, processing memory and hard drive capacity have reached the point where even fairly low-end machines are fast enough for most purposes. Memory can be added to most computers when or if needed and servers are becoming scalable. Bandwidth can be monitored and regulated with packetshapers and other devices. The new rule seems to be: buy what you need for today's purposes, but make sure it can be upgraded.

Nobody wants to buy a semi when a pickup truck will do nicely for the task at hand. To prevent "over-buying," I try to ask these questions:

1. Is this a job for technology at all? Will a set of regular books do at less cost what a subscription to e-books and a set of reading devices would do? Can a print test measure as much as a computerized test? Will paper flash cards do what drill and kill software might? Is the cost of digitizing paper records offset by fewer secretarial hours? If a subscription to a service is not being used, does it need to be renewed? (And is anybody checking to see if the service is being used?)

There are only two reasons to implement a technology in schools: to do a task less expensively or to do something important than can be done no other way. Technology for the sake of technology is both stupid and immoral.

2. What exactly will be users be doing with the equipment? If the only use of a computer is to write papers and access the Internet, one does not need the most powerful computer on the market. Apple makes a great computer for creating video, audio and graphics, but there is little reason to use such machines in labs used for primarily for testing or learning management systems. Does the camera need to be 10 megapixel when all the images produced will be going on the web at a low resolution? Do second graders need any more than a Flip-like camera (or its successor) to make video? As schools use the Internet for both file and application storage (see next post), are a large hard drive or a CD/DVD drive needed? Do employees need a a smartphone with a data plan or just a cellphone? 

Do not buy over-juiced equipment "just-in-case." I've yet to see just-in-case arrive. Base purchases on actual tasks.

4. Where will the machine be used? Laptop computers have a high TCO (total cost of owenership). They usually cost more intially, break more often, need replacement batteries, and have a shorter life span. Does a classroom teacher need a laptop or will a less expensive desktop do the job? This is actually a sub-set of the previous question, but a good one to be asking.

5. Will a reconditioned machine do as well as a new one? We've been finding that reconditiones computers with new monitors, keyboards and mice that come with a 5-year warantee cost us about half the price of new computers. Again, what will the computer be used for and will the used machine do the job? If you do purchase reconditioned machines, use a reputable vendor, get a warantee, and make sure each order is made up of the same model and make of machine.

You won't win any popularity contests helping people answer questions like the ones above. But the lure of the new, the shiney and the over-hyped is very powerful force in the technology world. For the sake of smart budgeting, we must help others resist the pull of the dark side.

Getting the most from your tech dollar 3: Sustainable technology

Over the next few days, I'll be addressing some strategies school districts use to get the most from their technology dollars. See the full list here. Any budget stretching strategies you're willing to share?

3. Sustainable technology

There is an economic and ecological philosophy called “sustainable agriculture.” The folks who practice this method of farming believe that more should not be taken from the land than can be naturally replaced by it each year. By rotating crops, returning the used harvest to the fields (in usually a rather aromatic form), and having reasonable yield expectations, farmers can leave the next generation a field in as fertile a condition as they found it.

Schools can and should practice “sustainable technology.”  This practice involves:

1) Not purchasing more technology than can be regularly maintained, upgraded and replaced. OK, get out your calculator. Johnson Middle School has 500 students and 20 classrooms.  We want a computer in each classroom (20) and a 4:1 student computer ratio in labs and the media center (125). That’s 145 computers in the building. People seem to be unhappy with computers much more than 5 years old. (Now every business manager reading this just shuddered, as did every technology coordinator for exactly the opposite reasons.) If I am going to replace my computers every 5 years, 20% of them need to be purchased new every year. Therefore, Johnson Elementary’s computer budget needs to be (.20 replacement rate X 145 computers X $1000) or $29,000. Not just this year, but every year from now on. And that’s just for computers. Better budget something for software upgrades, maintenance personnel, worn out printers and scanners, and network upgrades, too.

What happens when you don’t maintain? You get unreliable computers older than the children using them, and teachers who won’t use them at all.

2) Rotating the technology. Some pretty sharp teachers at one of our high schools discovered a few years ago how to give almost everyone a new computer - for the price of a single lab. Here’s how it works: the tech ed department buys new machines with the RAM, fast processors, and big hard drives needed to run its CAD software. The “pretty good” machines they had been using go to the business department where they will be used to do some desktop publishing, presentations and office practice stuff. The library gets the hand-me-downs from the business department for research and multimedia use. And finally the oldest machines go from the library to the English department’s writing lab and into classroom. And we sell the machines they had been using to marine supply stores to use as boat anchors. Pretty smart, huh?

Do not keep computers going that are at end of life. Our district, of course, uses computers just about forever (our last Apple IIe left a kindergarten teacher's classroom in 2010), but once a computer is more than five years old, we don't fix it. Determine what needs are "mission critical" for technology and put the old machines that will be recycled when they break into "non-mission critical" places.

3) Having reasonable expectations. If each of Johnson Middle School’s classrooms has a computer and there is a 4:1 student to computer ratio in the building, it will need to spend about $58 per student on hardware each and every year.  ($29,000 ÷ 500).  This is what? - about 1% of an average school’s per pupil budget? Let’s modestly add another 1% for technical support and staff training; and another 1% for software, maintenance fees, Internet fees, and network upkeep. That 4:1 computer to student ratio should allow each child about 90 minutes of computer use per day*. Time enough to write a story, do some research, practice some skills, or send and receive e-mail. I believe 90 minutes a day is not enough, given the power and importance technology will play in most students’ jobs and lives. But it is a far better ratio than most schools have now.

* I've never been able to do the numbers successfully for a sustainable 1:1 program given our current budget.

BFTP: Is educational experimentation ethical?

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post(s) April 7, 2006 and April 9, 2006. This is mash-up of the two. Go back and read the comments by Miguel Guhlin and Wes Fryer among others who took me to task on these posts.

Now one of the problems with being an administrator is that you start thinking like one after a while. The lure of the dark side (or as  Miguel would say "Gadget Gestapo, the Network Nazi") is formidable. Here are some questions that to me get at the heart of the control vs. creativity question [related to what teachers can do with school owned computers].

These are questions I don't have a good answer to. Questions that come from the dark, cynical side of the force...

• Does technology management come down to a choice between reliability/security and creativity/experimentation? If it is not possible to have both, which best serves student interests?
• Why should a teacher be given any more latitude to be "creative" with a computer than an accountant? Why should a teacher not be required to use district adopted software, much as they are required to use district adopted reading series or textbooks?
• Should a teacher experiment rather using established best practices? (A medical doctor who "experiments" on his patients would be considered unethical - that job is for specially trained research scientists.)

I am especially interested in the last question. So much of what is being written about in the educational technology blogosphere promotes the experimental use of technology with students. At what point do we need to ask ourselves is this healthy for students? Without studies showing that student blogging or writing in wikispace or the cool thing du jour increases student learning, am I acting professionally? What is the difference between untried methods and crackpot methods except one's point of view? (If I wear green socks and stand on my head as I deliver  lectures in Latin, I know student achievement will go up. But your ideas about using computers with kids are wacko!)

I'm not satisfied that either experimentation or even creativity by teachers is in-and-of-itself a prima facie good. I'm not convinced that teaching is an art, nor should it be. I'm worried that we have the potential of doing as much harm with new approaches as we have of doing good.

Why should we treat our children's intellectual health any differently than we do our children's physical health?

For those teachers who wish to deviate from research-based best practices, established curricula, and adopted resources - who wish to use either technology or leeches, the following requirements ought to be in place:

1. The purpose of the changed practice needs to be clearly stated in terms of a student outcome.
2. There needs to be a quantifiable method of measuring the effect of the new practice.
3. The result of the experiment/creative approach is shared with other professionals in such manner that it can be replicated.
4. The rigor of the above requirements should be high, all experiments should be externally monitored, and all data should be statistically validated.

Would we ask any less of those whom we entrust our kids physical health?

One of the reasons that we have NCLB is that the educational establishment itself never addressed its own accountability to the satisfaction of the public. Now we are chaffing under the short-sighted (but measurable) metrics non-educators have placed on our shoulders. If we are to be creative in our methodology, to use new technology tools, to emphasize new skills over basic skills, we better damn well take the time to make accountability a part of our efforts - and respect parents' and the public's need for it.  Do we really want to continue to be known as good-hearted, but fuzzy headed, artistes?