Fresno Unified’s tech upgrade…TCO?
Written on February 8, 2007 – 2:46 am | by Ed Warkentin
An article in the Fresno Bee today described how Fresno Unified is finally going to take seriously the fact that they are woefully behind in their technology hardware, network, etc. The Chief Technololgy Officer for FUSD, Kurt Madden, called the district’s technology, “the worst in the state.”
Some tidbits that were listed about the district’s current state of technology were these:
- District e-mail didn’t function properly for more than three months.
- A tech. glitch swallowed the records of 400-500 students when classes began last fall.
- Most student computers weren’t protected against viruses.
- The district rarely consulted teachers, parents, or administrators before deciding what technology to purchase.
- Each computer technician, on average, was expected to service 1,156 machines.
Tonight, the school board was going to consider a plan to address these problems. The plan was put together by California’s Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team.
All of this reminded me so much of the concept of “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO), and the conclusions that I made in my Master’s Thesis.
Much of the description of the current state of things at FUSD illustrates what many districts do wrong about technology implementation. This just happenes to be an especially bad example. Most districts have problems just like this, just not as bad. What’s worse, we have learned these lessons about how to do it right, but we don’t fully act on that knowledge.
I hope the plan that the district is considering incorporates a complete understanding of TCO, including tech support (one of the details specifically mentioned), but especially the idea of including training for teachers, both in how to operate the technology itself, and how to use it in classroom lessons.
Tags: tech planning
