Natalia LeMoyne-Hernandez, an education community manager for CDW, cited a UNESCO report that says a large majority of U.S. educators adopt ed tech tools without requesting evidence of effectiveness.
“Most educational technology adoption decisions are made based on vendor claims or peer recommendations rather than rigorous evaluation of learning outcomes,” she said. “This lack of evidence-based practice poses concerns about the actual impact of technology investments in education.” This also makes it difficult for IT leaders to justify technology purchases to administration or boards of education, she said.
Education is important, said Phil Hintz, CTO of Niles Township High School District 219 in Illinois.
“Teachers always say, ‘You tech people are always the no people. You’re always saying no, no, no. How are we supposed to do our job?’” he said. “I try to be a ‘Yes, and,’ or a ‘No, but,’ person to get to a workable solution in any way possible. But teachers need to be educated about why this is important.”
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According to LeMoyne-Hernandez, who worked in schools as both a teacher and in IT prior to her role with CDW, the key is to replace “no” with framing that preserves trust in the IT team without escalating tension.
“I’ve always felt like I have this translator role,” she said. “I felt like I was always a bridge, with one foot in the education world and one foot in the IT world, translating the needs from teachers into the IT needs and making sure the message was reciprocated on the other end as well.”
Technology Translation Framework Improves Communication Between Departments
Teachers are driven by engagement and learning outcomes, LeMoyne-Hernandez said, while IT is accountable for security, compliance, infrastructure and privacy. When those priorities don’t meet, “it slows innovation and causes friction,” pushing teachers to bypass official channels and leaving IT to manage growing risk.
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To navigate these situations, LeMoyne-Hernandez presented a technology translation framework designed to help IT teams better communicate with instructors. This six-step framework, she said, structures conversations and decision-making between teachers and the IT team.
- Identify the core ask. Teams must clearly define what teachers are trying to accomplish instructionally while acknowledging the technical requirements.
- Clarify the impact and constraints. Teams must assess the technical limitations, resource availability and potential business impact of implementing the technology. This is also where security and budget should be discussed.
- Map shared goals. Combining the first two steps, work to align technical specifications with business outcomes to establish common success metrics. In a K–12 environment, LeMoyne-Hernandez said, these “business outcomes” are student learning outcomes.
- Co-create solutions. IT and instructors should then work together to develop technical implementations that meet teachers’ needs while satisfying technical requirements. Implementations should satisfy both parties, LeMoyne-Hernandez said: network readiness, filtering, authentication and device management on the IT side; lesson flow, student engagement and assessment on the instructional side.
