It also takes solid leadership skills to bring new ideas to the table. That happens when teams seize opportunities to attend conferences, such as CoSN, to hear lessons learned by their peers in other districts.
But even when a conference is off the table, there’s much to be learned through online personal learning networks, through channels such as Twitter or other sites where like-minded professionals come together to move the needle on often new or emerging use cases.
Reach Out to Other K–12 Schools for Sound Advice
Gaining perspectives from afar, and from other teams within your school or district, also helps to ensure the most fitting technology for the job will be deployed, which is important when the conversation comes back around to scaling.
The ability to scale personalized learning initiatives or programs to ever-broader groups of students also helps schools and districts improve the returns realized on every educational technology dollar spent.
Faced with declining budgets and support, IT leaders, technologists and educators have precious few choices outside of getting their heads together to solve these important challenges. Without that collaboration, the efficacy and longevity of any technology-backed educational goal will always be in jeopardy.