To Integrate Or Separate? That Is The Question

• Much of this week’s work and readings focus on setting the stage for Enterprise Architecture.  Typically, school districts have maintained separate plans for technology and the district. For example, a district creates a “district education plan” and then has a separate “technology plan.”  Moving forward, do you think this is still a good practice, or should they be combined? 

This is such an interesting question, and I'm afraid my answer isn't clear cut and easy, as this topic isn't one that fits into a one-size-fits-all solution.  Ideally I would say if a school district has embraced technology as a "normal" part of the district's educational practice and budget for a good amount of time, and it has become part of the culture (as opposed to tech being seen as an "extra"), then the technology plan could become part of the district's comprehensive strategic plan. It would be ideal to see the comprehensive plan include the plans for technology when a district has technology embedded throughout its practice.  That said, technology plans can be so big and involve so many specifics, including financial specifics, that I can see why districts create a separate plan for technology.  There is a great deal to hash out regarding technology, and I can see how having its own plan might make it easier to organize and locate specific information. As education moves forward with technology integrated more and more seamlessly within its process, technology should become more and more a natural or "normal" part of THE plan for each district.  This shift in mindset might lead to integrating the tech plan into the comprehensive strategic plan for each district.

In VUSD we have a separate technology plan, but technology is written into our district architecture, the Blueprint For Educational Excellence (our LCAP), in strategies two and seven specifically.  So it seems VUSD has taken both approaches.  I wonder if eventually VUSD will lose the separate technology plan?  Last week I had a very informative meeting with our IT director, DeWayne Cossey (THANK YOU DeWayne!) who shared helpful "perspective" information.  In DeWayne's words, VUSD is "technology heavy" at the moment.  He explained, very well, what he means by that.  Here is my interpretation: Over the past few years VUSD's C&I department has been through some transition (partly internal, and partly due to implementation of Common Core) and curricular goals for the district are also going through transition.  For that reason, as IT moved forward with purchasing technology for the district in its goal of becoming 1:1 with devices for students, and having the hardware and infrastructure to set up conditions for ubiquitous computing abilities, they chose technology based on usability rather than based on curricular goals.  So the district is technology heavy, and on the C&I side, there is a bit of catching up to do in terms of setting those clear district curricular goals and also implementing PD for teachers that integrates both the technology and addresses the curricular goals.  Maybe when C&I has settled into its transition and the PD is in place for teachers, It might be a natural next step to fully integrate the technology plan into the district strategic plan so that there is only one plan.

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