Dive Brief:

• To support a $680 million 1:1 tech rollout in Oregon's Beaverton school district, two siloed groups within the district — a teaching / learning division and one focused on instructional-technology — were brought together to innovate and collaborate.
• The restructuring created a new chief academic officer position to help oversee the collaboration, ultimately meaning that the district's 40,700 students each received Chromebooks or iPads.
• Weekly inter-department meetings helped bridge existing communication gaps, and a focus on PD and teacher tech readiness helped the initiative find initial success.

Dive Insight:

A noteworthy aspect of Beaverton's rollout success story is that the district chose to move slowly and surely, with more consideration of various aspects of the program, instead of becoming over-reliant on the substantial amount of funding undergirding the initiative. After being conceived in 2014, actual devices weren't deployed until two years later, and an estimated 12,000 student devices were scheduled for deployment over the course of six weeks. That distribution will continue through fall 2017.

The lesson here is applicable to districts everywhere. To help generate long term success with ed tech devices or platforms, experts like Peter West, director of e-learning at Australia's Saint Stephen’s College, recommend analyzing existing infrastructure as a good first step. It can also be helpful for districts to communicate and share their experiences with tech rollouts. Districts that implement slow and thoughtful rollouts, like Beaverton, generally have the most success. In North Carolina, three districts with a variety of ed tech purchases had varying but ultimately successful experiences. By sharing best practices and highlighting pitfalls, school systems can help foster success beyond their borders.