Dive Brief:

• A research associate at North Carolina State University's Friday Institute for Education Innovation has some advice on how districts can make the best use of limited tech funds.
• One piece of advice is to be wary of education software that promises to raise test scores and to talk to other districts that use a piece of software before committing to it.
• Districts should also look at open-source software as a way to save money — though that may require an upfront investment of time to train users.

Dive Insight:

Mark Samberg, the man offering the advice, has a background in educational technology in K-12 at the school and district level. During a previous role as a technology director in that space, he saved one school $18,000 by using Linux rather than Windows or OS X, a lesson echoed recently by a Pennsylvania school that opted for Ubuntu.