District Purchasing of High-Tech Devices: How Teachers Continue to Lose Out
When I buy a new laptop, desktop, or smart phone, I have in mind what I want to use it for and how much I can spend. I then read about the appliance and its software, listen to other users and what they say about it, and then try it out for awhile. I ask myself: does it do what I need it to do? Is the price of the device worth what I want it to do? Then I decide whether or not to invest in it. I am what academics would call a “rational actor.” Yet there is an emotional side to my decision also: how does it look? how does it feel to use? how many other people are using it? Do I really need it or have the ads influenced my decision?
That is me the individual buyer and user. It is not, however, in most instances the classroom teacher who seldom gets the chance to decide what software enter her classroom. The classroom teacher is the end user and yet, in most cases, is seldom consulted about how new instructional software can be best used with students. (I and others have written about this problem of who exactly is the customer for school high-tech and who is the end-user–a split that, in my opinion, impedes integration of high-tech devices into classroom lessons (seehere, here, here, and here)
A recent publication from a non-profit organization and for-profit vendors (Digital Promise and The Education Industry Association) makes this point of the divorce between who use the classroom software–the “consumer” (read: district administrators, directors of technology, principals)–and who is the end-user (read: teachers) indirectly while raising directly tough issues that exist in districts when school boards buy laptops, tablets, hand-held devices and software.
In Improving Ed-Tech Purchasing, the authors, in concert with the Johns Hopkins Center for Research and Reform, surveyed over 300 “education leaders and technology executives” and conducted 50 in-depth interviews with these respondents. They were principals, superintendents, business officers, District Purchasing of High-Tech Devices: How Teachers Continue to Lose Out | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: