There are thousands of edtech solutions available, and the right ones can have a big impact on teaching and learning. However, with so many options, it can be difficult to identify which tools work best for your teachers and students. That’s why holistic, evidence-based edtech management is imperative for district leaders to ensure tools being used are having positive impact on student outcomes.
LearnPlatform by Instructure recently hosted a series of virtual user group sessions, bringing together forward-thinking administrators from districts across the United States, to discuss how they’re doing just that. These leaders shared successful strategies for edtech requests and vetting processes, ongoing evaluation, and gaining teacher buy-in. They also offered insights on how they leverage LearnPlatform for transparent communication, process automation and outcome analysis, ultimately driving more purposeful dialogue around their edtech resources.
Here are three key takeaways from these user group discussions, along with actionable tips from eight of our outstanding presenters:
Use your district product library as a single source of truth
Andy Fekete, Instructional Technology Specialist at Indian Prairie CUSD in suburban Chicago, Illinois discussed how teachers are constantly on the lookout for new tools to support classroom learning–a reality that certainly benefits students, but often inundates technology admins with requests. Mr. Fekete has benefitted from centralizing processes and communication within LearnPlatform, allowing teachers to know where to go and reducing manual work for his team.
Sarah Knight, Instructional Technology Specialist at Nixa Public Schools in southwestern Missouri pointed out that it’s easy to see the value of a centralized library of edtech tools for teachers, but that library needs to be easy to navigate. She leverages customizable lists, tags and pins available in the LearnPlatform District Library to emphasize and support district initiatives. This approach preserves teachers’ limited time by making it quick and easy to navigate the library to find approved tools that fit their use cases.
“Tags, lists, and pins are all great, simple, and easy ways to efficiently communicate with teachers, provide transparency, and really curate your LearnPlatform library to how you want it to support teachers.”
Sarah Knight, Nixa Public Schools
Micah Miner, District Instructional Technology and Social Studies Coordinator at Maywood-Melrose Park-Broadview School District just outside Chicago, Illinois leverages the LearnPlatform District Library to support equitable access to academic resources for his highly diverse and underserved student population. It’s a priority that the tools his educators use reflect their students, encourage broad worldviews and expand access to opportunity. With custom tagging, educators can more easily identify tools that have the unique characteristics they need to serve their students, supporting meaningful instructional practices and facilitating more purposeful dialogue around equitable digital resources.
“We want to have mirrors, windows, and doorways in our curriculum…With that, it's really important that teachers are able to understand what's being used in your district and what are the prioritized tools [that have been vetted for that equitable content]."
Micah Miner, Maywood, Melrose Park, Broadview School District
Institute effective product requests & vetting processes
Lindsey Evans, Lead Digital Teaching and Learning Specialist at New Hanover County Schools on the south coast of North Carolina uses a committee-based approach for vetting to ensure all perspectives are considered. This helps bring all stakeholders within the district to the table–not just Technology, but Curriculum & Instruction as well. Ms. Evans and her team also use product vetting rubrics for a consistent, transparent review process. The team uses LearnPlatform to facilitate these processes, and she has prioritized training building administrators and teachers so they understand the approach, buy-in, and fully utilize the system
Chad Fisher, Instructional Technology Coach at Frederick County Public Schools in northwestern Virginia discussed the growing emphasis on vetting edtech tools for data privacy in light of SOPPA and expanding state-specific legislation. As edtech proliferates, educators are being required to operate within numerous guidelines, with still ambiguous consequences. At the same time, a growing number of edtech tools originating outside the U.S. are being requested and used by teachers, with widely varying privacy policies and terms of service that may or may not address U.S. legislation. Districts need to determine (and regularly re-evaluate) their own approaches to data privacy and closely evaluate tools being requested for adherence. Whenever possible, compliant data privacy practices should be written into vendor contracts.
Erica Santamaria, Applications Technical Specialist at Kent School District in greater Seattle, Washington understands that edtech tool approval needs to be an ongoing process that evolves along with policy, district tech infrastructure, changing student needs, and district initiatives. She is working to establish a cadence for product re-review to keep Kent’s district library in LearnPlatform up-to-date. Leveraging custom tags in LearnPlatform to trigger workflows based on contract end-dates (whether single year or multi-year) will help to automate and streamline the process.
Leverage available evidence to drive decision-making
Dr. Dennis Lane, Instructional Technology Administrator for Oregon Trail School District in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon recognizes that teacher feedback is a crucial part of the picture when trying to understand which edtech tools are most effective. Dr. Lane gamifies the process using a ‘March Madness’ format to encourage teacher participation. This year, he’ll be leveraging LearnPlatform’s customizable teacher feedback request workflows to run his ‘tournament’.
"We’re trying to find a fun, engaging, and interactive way to find out what teachers want and like in comparison to the Inventory dashboard data–we can see their usage, but we want to know [which education tools] teachers feel are helpful in their environment.”
Dennis Lane, Oregon Trail School District
Cindy Free, Director of School Improvement at White County Schools in northeastern Georgia knows that getting a high-level view of all the tools being used in your district is a great starting point, but it’s also critical to hone in on specific tools to gain insight to how they are impacting student outcomes. Ms. Free’s team leverages rapid-cycle evaluation (RCE) through LearnPlatform as one important data point to inform conversations around student achievement and edtech investment. She focuses RCE efforts on those tools the district is dedicating significant budget dollars and those that students spend large amounts of time in.
"Our ultimate goal is to be able to look at trends and longitudinal data, not to make decisions on single rapid-cycle evaluation results. Hopefully, after doing this several times, with different kinds of student performance data, we may see trends to [allow us to] make good decisions.”
Cindy Free, White County Schools, GA
Thoughtful, evidence-driven management is the key to sustaining an edtech ecosystem that is healthy and high-functioning. While every district's journey is unique, these leaders’ insights demonstrate that all educators’ goals are the same–to deliver transparent, easily searchable access to edtech resources that positively impact student outcomes while saving teachers time, supporting equity and maintaining compliance.
