Technology Planning: Creating a Digital K-12 Environment

Start at the beginning. Get clarity around your existing education landscape and what it will take to modernize your learning platforms.

• Envision your plan for the school and the district.

• Assess specialized hardware and audio/video equipment requirements.

• Identify tools and resources needed to achieve future-ready learning and the infrastructure to support them. 

• Determine a standard format for content across all classes.

• Engage your online content development team to make learning more effective.

• Structure the learning program so students are focused on the task at hand.

• Conduct assessments to determine rollout readiness.

Formulate a rollout plan. Be sure all departments and district entities are involved.

• Clarify usage policies and restrictions.

• Identify process owners and processes to ensure alignment to rollout readiness.

• Develop and implement a communication plan to all stakeholders (why, how, what).

• Provide professional learning aligned to rollout readiness (administration, staff, students, parents).

• Determine security requirements (e.g., authentication, authorization) and SAML integration.

• Assess from a cost perspective whether servers need to be up and running all the time.

Now that your solution is in place, be sure your K-12 institution is ready to address any current changes or issues.

• Consider managed services.

• Measure ROI through analytics (device, usage, break/fix, implementation goals).

• Follow up on all processes to ensure success/improvement areas are identified.

• Survey students and administrators on what can be improved.

• Optimize to create greater value for the end user (price/performance).

• Maintain a DevOps-based mindset for updating the course content.

Adopting education technology isn’t a linear process. It’s a cyclical endeavor that requires educators to prepare for future upgrades, technology advancements and more.

• Ensure you have a documented process for device replacement or device additions.

• Consider buyback options for older hardware.

• Determine and act upon the optimum hardware refresh cycle for your technology platform.

• Be prepared to address emerging technology developments around augmented reality, virtual reality and the Internet of Things.