Dive Brief:

• Tom Daccord, an education tech trainer and the director of EdTechTeacher, says that even districts who’ve laid the technological groundwork for a successful 1:1 program can easily founder.
• Experience doesn’t seem to prevent it: He has worked with districts that are years into their programs and still struggling.
• One of the biggest obstacles, he wrote in a post for eSchool News, is a lack of buy-in — or even active opposition — from teachers, thanks to a deficit of specificity in educational objectives. 

Dive Insight:

Much has been made of the planning and preparation process for 1:1 programs, from ensuring sufficient bandwidth to adequately training and supporting teachers. But many of the districts Daccord says are still struggling have done that: They have instructional technology specialists and give their teachers room to experiment.

But Daccord says that even years into implementation, administrators he’s spoken with struggle to muster specific answers to key questions: What will change about how students learn? How does the technology align with the school’s pedagogical vision?

“From the outside, it often seems crazy that schools make major technology purchases with no clear plans for how learning should change. We’ve found, however, that there are so many details in technology planning—acquisition, security, sustainability, teacher training, parent education, and so on—that many schools lose track of the most important issues,” he writes.

And without those guiding educational principles, teachers lose faith in the program or doubt the motivation. Without their active support, the 1:1 program loses steam and administrators turn to Daccord.

So what are Daccord’s tips on how to fix it? Encourage teachers to envision how they’d like tech to transform their teaching, make sure teachers are constantly progressing towards that end goal, and communicate early, often, and throughout the process.