Module 4: The Foundation for a Technology Use Plan

In this section: The "vision thing"

Technology use plans often start with deceptively simple and exciting ideas. Something like, "Our students need more computers and Internet access." What a good idea! Students happily using computers, birds chirping in the background as kids effortlessly work on abundant, flawlessly performing, shiny new computers.

This is a vision, a possibility for the future. But having a vision of possibilities does not mean one has a vision statement that can lead to an effective Technology Use Plan. Until the vision is shared, clarified, and written down, it's only a nice picture in someone's head.

Why Do We Need a Vision?
Where Do Visions Come From?
The Stakeholders and You
Bottom Up or Top Down?
Wrap Up 

Why Do We Need a Vision?

A good technology use plan begins by describing the "three Ps:"

The Present, the Possibilities, and the Path to get from here to there.

In other words: Where are you now, with respect to technology? Where do you want to be? And what is it going to take to get where you want to be? In this section we will focus primarily on the possibilities--how to figure out where you want to be--the vision.

But why do we need this "vision thing" in the first place?

Imagine driving down a road without knowing where you want to arrive. You're entrusted with a car and a certain amount of money for food and gas, but you have no idea where you're headed. If you actually arrived there, it wouldn't do any good because you wouldn't know you had arrived. Sounds like an improbable situation, doesn't it? Yet this is often the case when schools are asked to head down the road towards a vague "technology" goal.

Whether driving down the road or moving towards technology integration, you must clearly know your destination so that you can plan a route, so that everyone will know when you've arrived at the goal and when you're off track, and what you need to bring along for the trip.

Practically speaking, if you want someone to give you money to achieve your vision, they're more likely to provide resources if they know exactly what you--and they--will be getting.

People say they don't buy into the "vision thing" because it's too constraining. They like to keep their "options open." But the "vision thing" is really very natural. Stories have endings, roads have destinations, lesson plans have objectives, institutions have missions, and technology use plans have concise and tangible goals.

Where Does a Good Vision Come From?

Well crafted visions come both from leaders and from the grassroots of the community, all those who have some idea of what learning and technology are all about, in other words, anyone who has something "at stake." These are called "Stakeholders". They are the source of visions.

A "stake" usually consists of something someone wants to see accomplished, or a concern they have if it is accomplished--or both! Examples of stakeholders and what they might have at stake in this situation include:

• Teachers who are looking for ways to help students learn, but have concerns about the amount of time and effort it will take to change the way they teach.
  
• Administrators who want to have a high-tech school, but are worried about the long-term costs.
  
• Parents who want their kids to be competitive and on the cutting edge, but also want them learning the "basics."
  
• School staff who can use new technology to improve their own productivity, but are also the ones who will install, maintain and repair the new technology.
  
• Union leaders who appreciate the need to improve teacher's capabilities, but need to keep a close eye on teacher work loads.
  
• Local business people who want a skilled work force, but don't want education to cost an arm and a leg.
  
• Citizens who want good schools but have a stake--a big, sharp, metal stake--in where their property taxes go.

And then there's you and your stake.

The Stakeholders and You

One of your prime responsibilities as a technology leader is to find out who the stakeholders are and what each one wants. That means talking with anyone who will talk with you--teachers, students, parents, school board members, union leaders, local business people--anyone with a stake.

For your technology use plan to be successful, you need to solicit input from as many stakeholders as possible. Your job is to synthesize, to find consensus when at first there seems to be none--to recognize when people agree, even when they don't know it, and to thereby get everyone to "buy into" the project.

Your goals for building a vision are two-fold:

1. Arrive at consensus--or at least agreement--on goals and objectives
   
2. Develop "buy-in" from all stakeholders

Consensus building is the art (and it is an art, or at least a craft) of seeing into the eye of a swirling hurricane of ideas, emotions and opinions to the calm, clear center where agreement or even consensus lies. As a facilitator your job is to listen to all parties and help them sort out and clarify their divergent ideas.

Buy-in is similar to getting everyone "on the team". The goal is to get as many stakeholders as you can to agree on the central idea, even if there is disagreement on details. Developing "buy-in" from stakeholders often happens naturally while building consensus because people commit to what they have contributed to.

There are several ways to talk to stakeholders. One way is to get everyone together in a big meeting to brainstorm in small groups, list ideas, and prioritize them. If you try this, be sure to prepare your meeting carefully. Have designated facilitators in each small group. Have a schedule--for brainstorming, sorting, sharing, and prioritizing--and stick to it. You don't want to start a fight over resources, you're trying to create a common vision.

More often, all the stakeholders won't be able to participate in large group meetings. When this is the case, you must use individual interviews, informal conversations, or even surveys, that involve these folks in the process.

We now have two solid reasons for creating a vision, consensus and buy-in. Now we need to find the actual people with whom to work to construct the vision.

Does the Vision Come From the Bottom Up or the Top Down?

When the vision comes only from the top down, those "underneath" often resent it, feel imposed upon and not listened to, and therefore, quite understandably, resist the change. If the vision comes only from the bottom up, those on the top often don't take it seriously or, if they do, they may feel threatened by it.

The way out of this dilemma is to be sure that the initiative is coming from both top and bottom at the same time. You want your leaders to lead, and you want your followers to feel that the leaders are listening and responding to their needs--leading them in the direction they want to be led.

Below are explanations for top down and bottom up approaches. As you read try and imagine using both approaches at the same time.

Top Down

A top down approach to creating a vision involves finding out from "top" stakeholders, such as school board members and district and school site administrators, what their vision is. You might find that these stakeholders, when pressed for any details, have mostly broad goals and ideas. Your job is to help them "fill in" their own vision. You can accomplish this with presentations, small group meetings, and interviews.

Bottom Up

Research shows that the more people become involved in integrating technology, the more successful the integration becomes. A bottom up approach to creating a vision is a grassroots effort. Bottom up approaches involve you and your core technology team as facilitators. Your immediate aim is fostering consensus for specific goals, but a great byproduct of good bottom up work is also large scale buy-in by all involved folks. Two birds with one stone!

An example of a successful bottom up approach is a school district in California that formed a steering committee that decided to physically bring all the stakeholders together in one room. The steering committee organized a community event in which all the effected parties gathered and formed into groups. They tacked butcher paper up on the walls and the groups were encouraged to just start writing down wish lists. The groups then proceeded to prioritize these wish lists, and those lists were eventually formed into a vision statement by the steering committee.

This is one example of creating vision in your organization. You may find that you do not have the resources, geographical proximity, or time to get all the interested parties together in one room. But this does not mean you can't simulate a bottom up approach by using face-to-face or phone interviews, small group meetings, or surveys to arrive at the same end.

Wrap up

We've seen that a vision is a tangible outline for where we want to be with technology, and that we need a vision statement to guide us on our way to making the possibilities a reality. We've also seen that visions come from stakeholders and us working together.

Now that we've explored these connecting issues (not to be confused with connective tissues), it's time to see ways we can actually apply all these concepts.

Page authors: Bob Hoffman and Caleb Clark
URL: edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/EDTEC596/session4/connect.html
Last updated: January 30, 1998