Dive Brief:

• Officials in New York's Little Falls Central School District are taking a slow and steady approach to a new tech rollout, prioritizing student connectivity to the Internet at home before a 1:1 device initiative begins.
• To "fill in" that gap, the district is working with Verizon and ClassBook.com 's OpenRoom to help families understand their connectivity options.
• The district also has a lending program that involves 10 individual Google Chromebooks, which students can check out and take home.

Dive Insight:

Little Falls seems to be setting a great example when it comes to preventing one of the most common pitfalls of device deployments. The lack of home-connectivity many low-income students face has been referred to by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as the "homework gap."

According to the district, they allocated a total of two years for their 1:1 device rollout plan. That might seem like a long time, but when potential problems are taken into consideration, it's actually a short timeframe. If problems emerged, significant amounts of both time and money could be wasted, and the trust of community members could be tested. The Chromebooks that students take home are also pre-equipped with filters that prevent them from going online and accessing unapproved content on campus devices.

Districts have a lot to gain from sharing information about their rollouts regarding what worked and what did not. Overall, slow approaches to adopting tech initiatives have proven pragmatic.