Yeah - Chapter 11 Decision-Making and Implementation Mode

In the past, the technology department was primarily responsible for all technology and software decisions. Teachers would say they needed math software and the technology department would look for the software and implement. If teachers were lucky, the principle and maybe one teacher would be involved in the demo.
Today, a smart district involves teachers, special education specialists, school administration and the technology department in the decision. For large-scale purchases, the school board must be involved.

1. Content area teachers need to be involved because they and they allow understand the needs of their students. Teachers work with students everyday and understand the needs of students and are responsible for anticipating future needs.

2. The Special Education department needs to be involved since they have the pulse on the needs of the special education students.

3. The principle has a high-level understanding of student needs, understand the budgetary constraints and view the curriculum requirements for the entire school.

4. Instruction technology Facilitators should be involved because they will be involved with the implementation making sure teachers can access the software and understand how to use it. Depending on the size of the implementation, the facilitator maybe trained in the software to make sure all features are used properly.

5. The Technology Department must be involved to make sure the software will run in the current infrastructure, the workstations can run the software and the network environment can meet the demand. The department is also responsible for installing the software and it is helpful to understand the server and/or web requirements prior to the purchase. If new hardware needs to be purchased, the technology department must research the hardware specifications and make recommendations. Finally, the technology depart generally has to spring for the software and hardware needs.

6. For large-scale purchases, the School Board or District Committee must pre-approve reqauests and have the final budgetary stamp of approval.

Finally, I reviewed the charts and these charts are helpful for Enterprise level software purchases; Enterprise level software is purchased for district wide applications.