What IT Leaders Need to Know About Education Technology

As learning environments become more and more digital, the importance of IT's role cannot be over-exaggerated. Maybe you’re at the front lines of EdTech, fixing students’ Chromebooks, creating bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, or training teachers on how to use online testing tools. Or maybe your district is behind the curve but you’ve seen the possibilities, and you’re fighting for more technology, the go-ahead to test a 1:1 device program, or faster Wi-Fi.

What does it mean to be a champion of EdTech? It doesn’t mean you have to do it first or best. You don’t have to attract news crews. But it does mean you’re seeking to understand how technology can benefit students. It means asking, what’s realistic for our district to try? What are the compelling reasons to go beyond “the way we’ve always done it”?

The bottom line is this: teachers need you. Students need you. Whatever level of technology your district has implemented, you need to be able to keep your existing technology running smoothly every day while budgeting, planning, and strategizing for the future. In this eBook, we hope to give you information and inspiration to do just that a little bit better.

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What is EdTech?

Everybody’s talking about EdTech. They have for years, and it’s likely that they will for years to come. A word that means exactly what it says, EdTech is all about developing and applying technology to enhance and personalize student learning. Picturing iPads and smartboards? You’ve got it. 

These EdTech examples are growing in popularity worldwide:

• Personal computing devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, smartphones)
• Interactive tools (e.g. clickers, whiteboards)
• Online platforms and classes (e.g. massive open online courses (MOOCS), Udemy online classes)
• Online testing
• Social media tools (e.g. Twitter, Pinterest)
• Software as a Service (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox)
• Gamification (e.g. Duolingo, Khan Academy)
• Applications (e.g. Wikispaces, Canva)
• 3D printers

Along with the examples above, EdTech trends we may see more and more of in the coming years include BYOD, flipped classrooms (in which teachers reverse the usual educational model, leading interactive classroom exercises and having students watch a lecture online at home), makerspaces (open areas for collaborative and independent work), and wearable technology (such as fitness devices or VR headsets).¹

The Rise of EdTech

Technology in education is growing quickly, and predicted to continue growing. Consider some of the following statistics: 

• In 2019, global spending on EdTech hardware reached $18.66 billion.²
• 65% of teachers use digital learning tools every day in their classrooms.³
• Schools in the U.S. spend $8.4 billion on EdTech software a year.⁴
• 63% of high school students use digital learning tools daily.³
• 97% of district administrators surveyed say the effective use of instructional technology in school is important (68% said extremely important) for preparing students for future success.⁵
• In one survey, 92% of educators say they are currently using digital content, e-books, or audiobooks, for instructional content, and another 4% are planning to in the future.³

What devices are most loved by educators? While iPads had a surge in popularity in the mid-2000s, Chromebooks have recently overtaken the education sector, leading over iPads with more than 50 percent market share.6

It takes a village to rear a tech-driven school. Not only does IT need the expertise to roll out, manage, and maintain new technology, but in order for technology to become part of a school’s way of life, teachers, administrators, and parents all need to be in favor. 

Here are some of the most common obstacles you may face in your work to champion EdTech. 

Lack of budget

Budget limits are a top roadblock to providing education technology. 56.7% of IT managers say not enough is spent on tech in their schools.⁷

Teacher adoption 

As the primary users of EdTech, teachers need to be properly trained in how and why digital tools are advantageous to student learning. More than anyone, a teacher knows his or her learning objectives. Without a clear strategy for success, teachers can fail to see the point of EdTech. 

One teacher who gets on board can be a helpful model for others who are less prone to adopt new methods. Transforming the way teachers teach doesn’t happen overnight.

Insufficient Internet access

Many American schools still lack the broadband they need to implement EdTech, though the White House’s ConnectED initiative aimed to provide 99% of students access to next-generation broadband by the year 2018.⁹  The nonprofit Education Super Highway reports that 40.7 million more students gained high-speed internet access between 2013 and 2018. Even with that growth, still 1,356 schools have not upgraded to the necessary fiber-optic connections.⁸

Security woes 

Ensuring the numerous EdTech devices and apps are up to date and secure can be a nightmare for IT teams. Especially when schools are the second-most targeted industry for ransomware attacks.

Most educators agree that technology is not the silver bullet of delivering a quality education, but it can be a vital piece of a well-built curriculum. 

Technology usage increases in the classroom every year, with even higher rates predicted in the next few years.⁹ Studies have revealed both celebratory outcomes and alarming results, indicating that the way schools are applying EdTech is more of an art than a science, and the way technology is used in the classroom today has room to grow tomorrow.

THE GOOD

• Higher student achievement. A study by Michigan State University professor Binbin Zheng analyzed 15 years of data from already-completed studies, and found that 1:1 laptop programs had a statistically significant positive impact on student test scores in English/language arts, writing, math, and science. 
• Higher learning and engagement. According to the Speak Up Research Project for Digital Learning, students using laptops and other devices are proven to be more engaged. Thanks to the ability to take notes, email with teachers, collaborate with peers, and receive reminders about upcoming assignments, technology is improving educational effectiveness.

THE BAD

• Worse standardized test performance. A Swedish study found that despite heavy investment in iPads, Swedish students who were using the internet the most in and out of school performed the worst on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests.  
• Distraction. In a study from the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 49% of students felt distracted during class on non-class-related digital activities. 

When she arrived at Douglass Independent School District in 2005, Lisa Nelson had one goal: bring modern technology to her rural school district. Located in Nacogdoches, Texas, two hours north of Houston, the district serves over 450 students in grades kindergarten through 12 across three buildings. As the school’s only IT professional, she knew her journey to EdTech would not be all smooth sailing.  

But Lisa is a firm believer in tech literacy for all students. As a result, today, students in her district enjoy comparable technology to what’s used in larger, urban districts. Teachers are armed with tools like smartboards, digital projectors, iPads, and digital cameras. Every student in grades 7-12 brings their own Chromebook to and from school. 

This radical technology influx has totally transformed the way teachers interact with students, manage their classrooms, and build their curriculums. 

When she came to Douglass ISD, Lisa says teachers had computers, but these workstations were stand-alone, so staff couldn’t even communicate with each other via email. Getting high-speed Internet in their rural location meant paying for a fiber line to run closer to the school, as there wasn’t one close previously. In order to support the iPads and new workstations they were purchasing, they increased their bandwidth every year, going from 2.8 to 80 mbps in just four years. Currently, Lisa's working to increase it to 100. 

Making a shift to more technology didn’t come without challenges. Parents were initially fearful that 1:1 computing would give students “an open conduit to the Internet,” said Lisa. Key to garnering parental support was educating them on the benefits of giving every student a device, such as the flexibility to work both at home and at school, along with security measures that would keep them from roaming undesirable areas of the Internet. 

When her first shipment of iPads arrived on campus, Lisa said that although the devices were ready-to-go, issues connecting devices with switches made their rollout “a little bumpy.” Troubleshooting revealed a need to manually reconfigure the existing IT infrastructure. Management of new technology was also “a serious concern” with more and more devices to handle, and finding education device management software like Impero and GoGuardian helped. 

Today the district’s IT infrastructure consists of over 350 Chromebooks, 200 workstations, 150 iPads, and a multitude of iOS systems, servers, switches, and routers. As they have bought more devices, Lisa said their “growth is just limited by money. And the amount that you can handle as is.” She continually watches to make sure they don’t come close to outgrowing the network, leaving room to expand as they go, and upping bandwidth when needed to support additional tech, because “nothing is worse than shiny new devices that you can’t get on the Wi-Fi.”

Thankfully, Lisa said that getting budget for IT projects has been smooth, thanks to incredible support for new technology from teachers, the school board, and the community. In fact, district enrollment has been up every year she’s been with the district; a direct result, Nelson believes, of the way the district supports technology in education. To make sure EdTech continues to have a positive impact on students, she’s invested significant time in teacher training and surveys, attending faculty meetings, and inviting continual feedback from teachers on issues they’re experiencing. She also surveys students, asking what went well and what changes students would like to see in the way technology is used in their education.  

Nelson believes that any school, no matter their size, can stay in the EdTech game. “My mission statement is that I feel that we may be a rural district, but there’s no reason we can’t be competitive with districts around us and on a national level…. It’s a disservice to not prepare students for what they’ll find in business and college.” 

So how do IT professionals help keep their districts competitive? Beyond reading and research, “having a really solid network of people in your industry, like other directors of IT or tech specialists, to bounce ideas off of.” Seeing EdTech implemented at various stages in other school districts has been one of the biggest ways Lisa has learned. Attending events also help Lisa stay connected with what’s going on in the larger EdTech world. Two of her favorites: the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, and the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) Annual Convention & Exposition.

What’s next for Douglass ISD? Nelson says that going 1:1 with Chromebooks was a big change, and although she’s not sure what’s next, she’s excited about what’s to come. “Seven years ago it was iPads. Four years ago, Chromebooks and Smartboards. Who knows what’s going to be the next big thing?”

Somebody has to be first. For over a decade, Vail School District, one of the best-known school districts in Arizona, has attracted national media attention for being the first to implement some exciting EdTech innovations.  

Vail provides K-12 education to a large, rapidly expanding community twenty miles south of Tucson. The district opened the nation’s first textbook-free high school in 2005. They implemented Arizona’s first BYOD initiative in 2009. They were also the first public school district in the U.S. to install Wi-Fi on school buses in 2010. 

Today all 18 of Vail’s schools have gone no-textbook. In addition, the district is also the largest provider of digital content in the state of Arizona through their open content curriculum repository, which gives teachers in over 100 partner districts free, instructionally valuable online resources.  

Who’s the champion behind all this technological achievement? Matt Federoff has served as Chief Information Officer at Vail since 1999. Along with helping Vail achieve all of these “firsts,” he’s opened 15 new schools, spoken both nationally and internationally, and won various awards for his leadership in EdTech. 

Day-to-day, Matt oversees IT management for a growing district of more than 12,000 students and 1,700 employees, but what makes him a true champion of EdTech is that he understands how changing technology is changing learning. He knows that IT is the critical provider of smooth tech performance. And he recognizes that without IT maintaining network connectivity and seamless performance, learning won’t happen the way teachers need it to. 

A 1:1 computer-to-student ratio is now the standard for all high schools in the Vail School District; every student either brings their own laptop or uses a school-issued Chromebook. Teachers use free, digital instructional tools from Open Educational Resources (OER) instead of textbooks, and blogs and email to correspond with parents. Statewide assessments take place online instead of on paper.

Federoff said the district’s biggest IT challenge isn’t bandwidth —“It’s not 50 kids watching one YouTube video.” Instead, it’s the fact that students are constantly accessing smaller pieces of content, which puts a huge load on the overall network infrastructure. So anytime the network is down, the situation has to be responded to immediately. 

Using a network monitoring tool has given Vail visibility into their network performance. According to Matt, “You don't use network monitoring software to show you what's broken. You use it to learn what normal looks like.” With no sense of normal, glitches go unnoticed and turn into critical outages that directly impact student performance. Detecting and preventing network issues becomes much easier with a current picture of network performance. 

Case in point: when the school district added another grade to their 1:1 program about a year ago, they saw intermittent slowdowns and poor performance on the network. Then IT put a trace on their core switch. It was quickly clear that the particular switch was completely overloaded. With their network monitoring tool, they were able to replace the switch and see traffic return to normal.

Without having a network monitoring tool, Federoff said “I don’t know how I’d have gotten here in the thoughtful way we have.” 

Matt said that wireless networking has become more than just a nice-to-have in today’s schools: it’s a “God-given right.” In an educational setting, the wireless has to work well everywhere, and when it’s down, IT has to respond immediately. 

To be an EdTech champion, then, means bringing the kind of technology students experience every day into their classrooms, enabling great learning by creating smooth user experiences, and using tools that help you do it seamlessly—celebrating the achievements as they come, and continuing to move forward into the future.

How does a top Ontario college roll out innovative technology while keeping over 11,000 student users happy and ensuring that none of the school’s 2,000 devices go down at any given moment? 

Georgian College is one of 24 publicly funded Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario. With seven campuses at various locations across Ontario, the college currently boasts the highest hiring rates of any college in Ontario. Georgian students participate in paid co-ops, providing students with real career-focused experience in a variety of areas, including business, hospitality, nursing, social services, and more, that helps better prepare them for the workplace.  

Arsalan Iqbal, an Infrastructure Support Technologist in the college’s 60-person IT department, was quick to label Georgian’s network infrastructure as “very complex.” With the college’s geographically distributed nature, maintaining connectivity across buildings and campuses requires constantly monitoring device performance, uptime, and availability to respond to errors as quickly as possible when they occur.  

As technology grows, Georgian makes sure their students have the best tech resources possible for a modern education. Randy Baker, who has worked at Georgian College for almost 30 years in the IT department, said in the past few years, they’ve introduced computerized podiums in classrooms and multi-media-enabled classrooms and conference rooms. Soon, they hope to introduce BYOD open spaces in classrooms, where students can work with any device of their choosing. 

What challenges does the rollout of new technology bring? “There is always concern that our network won’t support what we’re going to roll out next.” IT uses a variety of tools, including network monitoring software, to monitor their current network load and plan for future capacity. Network monitoring software has helped IT see problem devices on the network, identify the root cause, and fix them before more serious performance issues occur. 

Without network monitoring tools, “we would have ongoing, persistent problems,” said Randy. 

The mission of Georgian College is to inspire innovation, transform lives, and connect communities through the power of education. By creating and maintaining a technologically modern campus, Georgian is cultivating an environment in which their mission can be best achieved through the personalized learning opportunities and improved connectivity that EdTech provides.

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