Advice to vendors

A small task force from our district spent yesterday afternoon reviewing five different interactive white board (IWB) products. Our task is to recommend a "standard" product that will  be installed over the course of the next 5-10 years in all our district's 250+ classrooms. In other words, the folks demonstrating their wares yesterday had much to gain from doing well.

First of all, each vendor came prepared. Each took his/her job seriously. Each had a good product that had one or more unique qualities that may have made it more desirable than the other four.  But were I coaching these folks, here is some advice I'd offer.

1. Make sure you know your product in and out and that it works. Seems like a "yeah, duh" piece of advice but one vendor definitely had problems, including a software freeze-up that required the computer be rebooted. Every teacher sitting there saw him/herself in front of 30 rowdy kids waiting in the same situation.  I am amazed at how often this sort of thing happens in tech demos. This like a psychiatrist who is trying to help a patient overcome his fear of snakes having a cobra poke its head out of his pocket.
2. You can't sell a product like this on:
   1. price alone
   2. software alone
   3. hardware alone
   4. charisma alone
3.  Don't "over" demo. Each vendor had 45 minutes. One demo'd nearly the whole time, full speed, non stop. I was pretty sure this product would slice tomatoes and squeegee your car if she'd gone on another 15 minutes. While this was great fun to watch, I could see folks try to follow her rapidly tapping fingers dancing intricate sets of steps that looked nearly unmasterable by the average Joe. A slower "look how easy" approach may have convinced more teachers.
4. Don't be a smug or sarcastic or superior. Even if your product is great, we may sufficiently dislike you that we'll find reasons to buy another product.
5. Find a way to "connect" with the teacher in each of us. Whether sharing a "has it ever happened to you" story or a simple "here's a fun thing to do with your kids" activity, show you've had some classroom experience - assuming you have. If you haven't, share stories or activities from real teachers.
6. Be prepared to answer questions about costs - definitively. As long as it is taxpayer money, we will be balancing function and price, getting the most features for the dollar. It makes us mad if you can't be straight forward and immediate about prices.
7. Don't even bring up vaporware. How did W put it? Fool me twice shame on you; fool you once shame on me... or something like that. On a related note, if you want me to be a beta site (or first alpha site in the state or in the public schools), you'd better be prepared to make some huge monetary concessions. Otherwise, we will go with the tried and true.
   
8. Bring treats. OK, we  don't take bribes and even if we did, a couple doughnuts or a cookie won't sway us. But I'll bet there is a subliminal effect that the gift of food brings to such an event.

Were I a salesman and dependent on commission, I am sure I'd be living on foos stamps. I couldn't sell air to a drowning man. But if I were in sales, I know some things I wouldn't do.

Oh, do we make the same mistakes trying to "sell" new technologies or methods or materials to teachers ourselves???

So what ticks you off and keeps you from buying?

The real tech plan

Yes, our district has the 30 page, three-year tech plan. (Why am I not envisioning tons of people jumping on this link?) Creating/revising it is a good process in that we are forced to do a little long-term thinking.

But for day-to-day operations, for prioritizing tasks and budgets, and for creating a means of accountability, we (our tech staff and district advisory committee) put together the one-page plan which consists of annual objectives grouped under out long range (one might say permanent) goals. So far, this is what next year's plan looks like. (Each objective is usually followed by a person/persons responsible. These names have been deleted in this blog entry.)

 

Mankato Long-range Goals and Objectives for 2006-07 for District Media Services

1)    All students will demonstrate the mastered use of technology to access, process, organize, communicate and evaluate information in order to answer questions and solve problems. Action items, 2006-07
a.    Continue work with Curriculum Council on placing information literacy and technology standards in secondary written content area curricula based on survey.
b.    Develop Internet safety campaign for both school and community.
c.    Continue library media study groups to discuss best practices and the media/technology program’s contributions to student achievement.
d.    Pilot DropBox and Turnitin with high school English departments.

2)    Technology will be used to provide the most current, accurate and extensive information resources possible to all learners in the district and community in a cost effective and reliable manner at maximum convenience to the user. Action items, 2006-07
a.    Implement rSchools website for each secondary school.
b.    Implement Bright/Smart Classroom projects. (Long term project to equip all classrooms with IWB, sound systems and data projectors.)
c.    Design community reporting mechanism regarding the outcome of technology referendum.

3)    All district teachers will have the technology training, skills and resources needed to assure students will meet local and state learning objectives and have the technological means to assess and record student progress. Action items, 2006-07
a.    Expand CODE 77 training to include secondary teachers – approximately 125. (3 hours personal instruction and 9 hours group instruction to go with new teacher computers.)
b.    Conduct training in use of data projectors and IWB.
c.    Continue training sessions on Sagebrush Viewpoint software.
d.    Survey staff on Mac/Windows preference for CODE77.
e.    Work with mentors to establish a formal tech training program for new teachers.

4)    The district will use technology to improve its administrative effectiveness through efficient communication, planning and record keeping. Action items, 2006-07
a    Update SASI to 7.0
b.    Replace MeetingMaker, SendMail, and MajorDomo with Microsoft Exchange server.
    c.    Continue Sagebrush data mining project.
            i. Refresh and automate SASIxp and state test data export/import
            ii. Import data Cognitive 6
            iii. Import data DIBELS
    d.     Expand NWEA testing to grades K-1 and 11.
    e.    Expand Read Naturally to all buildings.
    f.     Implement the Versatran transportation system.
    g.    Expand use of facilities scheduling program.

5)    The district will have a reliable, cost-effective, and secure technology infrastructure that supports the learning, teaching, and administrative goals of the district. Action items, 2006-07
a.    Upgrade WAN.
b.     Continue expansion of wireless network as needed.
c.    Implement online technology repair request system.
d.    Discontinue YODA for students; move teachers to Lodestar online storage.
e.    Replace three elementary computer labs.
f.    Supervise technology needs of new classrooms at Monroe, Hoover and Washington.
g.    Hire two building technicians and data processing clerk. Train.
h.    Conduct print audit.

 Somehow the plan lacks much excitement. There is nothing directly in it about using Web 2.0 technologies with teachers. No cutting edge experiments. Lots of support of other initiatives. No teeth in getting more/better IL and IT skills into the curriculum.

But it is plan that has ownership and, if past experience is any indicator, it will get done. Something to be said for that too. 

Minnesota - bottom in tech; tops in education?

Today's Minneapolis StarTribune (May 4, 2006) had a very interesting article about Minnesota ranking at the bottom of states in its use of technology in education. See "State's education tech grade dips to a D." From the article:

 But the report [Education Week] says nothing about a link between technology and student achievement. In fact, the report's authors acknowledge that many of the lowest-scoring states on this list have some of the highest student test scores.

Yes, boy and girls, that seems to be correct. Want better test scores? Use less technology. At least in Minnesota where, despite our failing grades in technology, we still manage to place among the top 2-3 states in nearly any measure of student achievement.

A tech director in the state, having read this, quickly asked:

 Any thoughts on the test score issue?

 Dr. Scott McLeod at the University of Minnesota quickly responded (e-mail used here with his permission):

You mean as an excuse for not needing more tech? Sure, here are a few:

1. We have lots of research and practical evidence that technology, when used WELL in classrooms, can have positive effects on achievement. Unfortunately, this is still the exception rather than the rule - we've been tinkering around the margins.
2. We also know that intelligent, strategic investments in administrative technologies can help teachers, administrators, and other district personnel be more efficient and effective in terms of time, cost, impact, reach, etc.
3. Minnesota's coasting on its relatively high standard of living, low levels of minority/poverty/ELL kids, multitude of small schools/districts, and few large urban school systems. There's nothing magic happening in Minnesota schools compared to other places - we haven't discovered the "silver bullet."
4. Our society is getting more technological, not less. Schools are one of the last domains in which day-to-day activity has not been substantially transformed by technology.
5. All of this is a failure of leadership, at multiple levels.

Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D.
University of Minnesota

On the whole, I agree with all of Scott's observations and would add a couple of my own.

1. To me technology use has NEVER been about increasing test scores - at least in our district. We've always seen it as a tool to help teach kids better information literacy/problem solving/HOTS skills. The only place where we've been using tech for the purpose of raising test performance is with our very low performing kids, especially ELL.
2. I've always thought that we "leaders" look in the wrong direction when looking for technology models. We've traditionally (at least when writing our state tech plan) looked at high tech use states NOT high educationally performing states - which seems to me ironic. Why would we look to Kentucky, for example,  as a model plan, when on almost every indicator of school success/student performance it does worse than Minnesota? It's not about who has the most tech toys winning; it's about who has the best prepared students. For me, the most worrisome thing about the Strib article is than MN doesn't have an tech/info lit skills curriculum.
3. Of course there may be another way to interpret this study as well. In the mid '80's a pundit at the federal Department of Education, if I remember correctly, infamously predicted that eventually the best schools will be the ones that provide the most human teaching; the poorest schools will increasingly rely on the economical technologies.
   
   Are we seeing this prediction come true?
   

(A bit coincidental that I addressed this same topic in a backward sort of fashion in this blog yesterday, remarking/complaining that it is tough getting teachers to try new approaches with technology when, as measured by test scores, teachers' traditional methods are quite successful.)