Securing Future Tech Funding

What can schools do to sustain their tech funding? The Sustainability Challenge: Taking Edtech to the Next Level offers 10 ways to maintain funds by fully integrating technology into educational programs. The methods include developing new strategies for assessing students' technology-related work and creating a state and local framework for improving technology funding.

Using Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee as case studies, the report evaluates the current thinking about technology funding and highlights examples of good educational-technology use. "If local schools do not develop the talents of staff, if they do not rethink how [education technology] can be more effective in fulfilling their core mission, and if they do not provide technical support and incentives for trained professionals to stay, then this wave of education technology investments will have been badly made," the report says.

Surprisingly, the report makes no mention of the word "library." Doug Johnson, director of technology for Mankato (MN) Public Schools, says Internet access at public libraries can help bridge the digital divide. Kathy Schrock, administrator for technology for Nauset Public Schools in Orleans, MA, says librarians should "plan on becoming a voice on this issue in their district."

To view the report, log on to www.benton.org/Library/sustainability/sus_challenge.pdf.