Funding Technology in the 21st Century

As first posted on edtechdigest

Okay, so let’s face it. The current formula for funding technology in education just does not work. Daily, we talk about the need to get technology in the hands of every child. With new and up-and-coming advancements in technology, there will be more of a need to improve infrastructure, bandwidth, servers, wiring, wireless technology and much more if we are to remain current and on the cutting edge. This will all cost money—and lots of it.

Currently, districts find it hard just to put a few computers in a classroom, let alone one in every child’s hand. Yes, it can be done—and some districts are making it happen—but in this day of ever-shrinking budgets and more of a focus of passing standardized tests—money, rightfully so or not—is often funneled toward that cause.

This leaves school and district budgets looking for ways to be creative in order to make up shortfalls. E-rate funding and grant writing these days is just not enough. We, as leaders, have to start to think outside of the box. We have to get creative in order to help generate revenue to offset some of these added burdens to our district or school’s pocketbook.

So, here I go. I will attempt to share some ideas and options we can try to help raise revenue and offset costs.

First of all, I never really understood why schools do not take more advantage of the opportunity to generate revenue within their school or district through advertising. Let’s face it: the advertisements are already there at baseball games on scoreboards, outfield walls and much more. They are also at basketball tournaments, sponsored by companies such as Coke or Pepsi. They can be found in many places in our school if we really look for them.

Let us be real folks. The technology is readily there for us to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity that passes us by daily. Don’t tell me that you don’t want your child inundated with advertisement daily while learning. Do you take them to the mall? Have you ever been to a professional sports game? Do they watch TV? Advertisements are everywhere.

The best part is, our children have also become pros in tuning them out.

Have you ever watched a child when a commercial comes on? They stop watching the TV and their mind wanders. They often are not focused on the ads. Why not do as malls do?

Schools should purchase digital signage and advertise what is going on in their school on a daily basis. They could also replace hallway peg boards with these signs as well, scanning in and showing off student work.

Periodically, these displays could be replaced with advertisements appropriate for students and learning. What advertisements they were and how they were determined could all be worked out. In time, these ads would pay for the initial cost in equipment and setup and more. The additional revenue generated could go directly towards the technology budget.

Think about it: digital signs in hallways with schedules, alerts, directions, student work, calendars, videos and much more occasionally interrupted by brief ads by manufacturers of products children were interested in.

How about advertisement on devices children were given as well? Let’s say we give them each a tablet computer or cell phone controlled by the school or district. This device obviously could be controlled by the district and filtered for appropriate content. It could also send occasional advertisements to the user to see. The ads would be brief and interrupt learning very little. We could set guidelines on noise, length and more for these devices.

If manufacturers were in on reaching this demographic, they would gladly comply to our requests. The revenue generated from this could help pay for the devise itself and more. Think about it: not only will the student have this device in school and be seeing these ads, but they will also take the devise home and see ads all evening and all weekend as well. This is a win-win situation for schools and companies.

How about the idea of having real school stores?

As an educator, I am aware of many discounts manufacturers offer to teachers and students. I also know that many other students and educators do not know they exist or if they do know they exist, they have no idea where to go to get the discount. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could go to your child’s school and shop in a mini store there, right inside the school, that offered student discounted software, computers, books and more as examples? Discounts could be offered on many products and the revenue generated from their sale could go directly back into the school’s budget for things such as technology.

More and more, schools across the globe have been talking about putting course and class work online for their students to do. These sites created by schools and districts could also house advertisements for revenue generation. Sites such as Facebook generate revenue from advertising, so why shouldn’t we?

How about the opportunity to generate revenue in the form of things we produce? There used to be bake sales, craft sales and much more that would show off what a student made and therefore be for sale for family or friends to buy from the students and the school. How about if we had classes or lessons that produced things we could sell on a regular basis?

We could make podcasts, blogs or apps available for subscription or purchase. We could feed video or audio out on a per purchase or monthly rate. The opportunities are endless. The justification for the cost of the product could be that all profits went right back into the hardware or software used to make these products.

These are just some of the many ways we as educators can start to get creative about generating revenue to supplement the ever rising cost of outfitting schools for the 21st century. We need to start the conversation now—or we will miss this opportunity right in front of us.

If society wants us to start operating schools more like businesses with a focus on ROI and pay for performance, and if they want to look at test scores as a way to show adequate yearly progress and data to ensure we meet our goals—then we need every aspect of teaching to be more like industry as well.

We need to be able to generate our own revenue. We need to be able to compete. We need to rely on those very same companies that are offering to help us solve our problems, to also provide us with the revenue to do so.

Tags: Education, Funding, Technology, digital, sale, signage, stores

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Featured Blogger Comment by Greg Limperis on April 15, 2011 at 2:16pm: Thanks, Great video too. I am adding the video here to this site.

Comment by sachauncey on April 15, 2011 at 2:11pm: Thought you might appreciate this as it is pertinent to our discussion..

April 8th, 2011 - The Mooresville Tech Revolution
http://learningmatters.tv/blog/on-pbs-newshour/the-mooresville-tech...

Sarah

Featured Blogger Comment by Greg Limperis on April 10, 2011 at 8:03pm: Laurence,

I agree with you, schools may not be as commercialized everywhere but what are our options really? Do we all try to write grants? Are there enough grants for everyone to get money? Is everyone who currently gets a grant ready to get less money so that everyone can get some? Are you willing to wait around until the price comes down enough? Won't there still always be something newer that will come out that will cost more? Yes there are cheaper ways around integrating tech like the use of a netbook over a laptop but what happens when the child finds that netbook too cumbersome compared to the tablet they are use to using or when we try to go to a BYOD (bring your own device) setup in order to save money and students forget to bring the device or the device gets broken and they can't afford to fix it right away or they can not afford to bring their own device like many of the students in my district where 85% of them currently live at or below poverty level. Yes many come to school now with a cell phone or ipod but when we ask them to bring things in like pencils or notebooks, they do not bring them in and when we ask them to leave things home such as ipods and cell phones they bring them in. Believe me that last policy of not bringing those things in is neither my policy not one I believe in. The point is they often do not bring in what we ask them to bring in and they bring in things we do not want them to bring in. What happens when they realize that bringing in this device results in them doing more work? There are students in my district that do not value learning as much as others do and coming to school for them is more of a social event than it is as a means to advance themselves by giving them the building blocks to get to college and succeed. Can it be done, can we correct this? Sure but I would not want to start off relying on them to bring in good working devices. We can get there but where will the funding come from for them to have this great equipment. Honestly, I can understand where more parents would not want their kids exposed to more commercialization, but couldn't we just make that another thing we educate our students about? Can we teach them to make good decisions in life?

I agree there are many great free resources out there, but the only webcams in my school are ones supplied by the teacher themselves. DO we want to rely on asking all those teachers to bring supply their own equipment also?

As you point out, books are getting antiquated and digital books are the way to go, but not without every student having a device int heir hand that can handle that? How do we pay for that?

I guess this is something we have to work out together. I am sure there is a way we can come up with that schools can generate real revenue over candy sales and gift/wrapping paper sales.

Comment by Laurence Cuffe on April 10, 2011 at 11:28am: Well, not all schools are as commercial as Greg suggests. Over here in Ireland none of the schools I have taught in, and none of my kids schools, have vending machines (we find thin kids easier to haul around), and I cant recall seeing a scoreboard with a logo on it at any of the schools I've trooped my kids to for sports on a Saturday morning.
The cost of equipment is significant, but dropping rapidly. I deliver blended learning to one of my classes, and I shoot my lessons using either a flip camera, or the webcam built into my $250 netbook. I throw these up onto youtube, and put the links to them together on either an educational Wiki (Free) or a Trailmeme (Free).

Its not so long since that there was a school video camera with one member of staff anointed as its high priest, and a course of daily prayers were required before you got to play.

One more anecdote. A friend of mine is French and they went to live in France for a year, bringing their kids with them. One of the kids was studying maths at a fairly elementary level in the local school, and was provided with a maths textbook from the school library.
Inside the front cover of the textbook was the name of one of the previous students who used it, who was my friends uncle, and who had used the book twenty years before.

We have to be careful not to confuse marketing (encouraging kids to write on their text books), with pedagogy.

Featured Blogger Comment by Greg Limperis on April 8, 2011 at 2:55pm: Looks like Marcello has left the group. What a shame. I was enjoying his alternative point of view on the subject. I hope others are not afraid to speak up either for or against the topic here. I am just trying to spark some conversation as to how we will deal with the ever looming budget problem we will have in districts when it comes to funding Ed Tech.

Comment by sachauncey on April 5, 2011 at 11:24pm: Marcello, Just want to chime in and say that I very much appreciate all comments... especially those that encourage me to think differently. Thoroughly enjoying the comments and conversation. It's great to "hear" the passionate voices, too. I'd love to know if anyone changes his or her mind about something as a result of this conversation -- and what tipped you to another way of thinking. Again, thank you Greg for posting the question and sharing your ideas. Sarah

Featured Blogger Comment by Greg Limperis on April 5, 2011 at 10:55pm: Marcello,

I am not quite sure what your thinking is whether inside or outside of the box. Since you have not given any other alternative and it sounds like you think the funding will not change nor that you might need any additional funding, I would think that you are happy with funding remaining at status quo, therefore not really needing to talk about generating additional funding and therefore not needing to think outside or inside of the box.

Do you think that the commercialization of schools is not already there. I have already cited some examples. Do we cover up the manufacturers symbol on our technology equipment? Do we remove all logos from vending machines, scoreboards sports equipment and such. Believe me, I in no way want my kids inundated with commercials all day, but a few logos or ads probably would not be any worse than it currently is. I am sure you could search around your school and find plenty of corporate logos around that you and I have become accustomed to overlook.

As for my post being a polemic, I do not quite agree. If you look at some of the postings below and the people who have said they like this discussion, not everyone is in disagreement with me here. Some are looking for ways to generate additional revenue. Not everyone has the ideal setup you describe in your school or district. I have been in many districts and schools where the technology would be considered nothing more than pathetic.

At least we are both in agreement that training is essential but as I can tell you is not always given. Our district purchased 15000 dollar Tandberg video conferencing equipment 4-5 years ago and to date, there has only been one official training on how to use it and one refresher I had given. Most people because of turnover and lack of training do not even use the equipment nor know how. Unfortunately, my district very seldom uses my skills to help integrate these devises more.

If you feel we are way behind where we need to be, then how do you propose we get there? What would you recommend we do in order to generate revenue to accomplish it. One can not say what others are suggesting is bad if they have no other alternative. Are you suggesting that being without far outweighs what I have suggested that it does not even warrant a discussion about it?

DO feel that your comments are always welcomed. I love to talk about issues and am open to hearing both sides of an argument. You may be right here, but sitting back and hoping that more funding or support is thrown in my lap at the inner city school I work at is not only unlikely but could also be considered a dream. We are too focused on raising test score to think that it may be able to be achieved through proper integration of technology, therefore taking funding away from where it could and probably would be best spent. Engaging our students through a medium that has been shown to capture their interest is only possible if they can get their hands on it.

Featured Blogger Comment by Greg Limperis on April 5, 2011 at 9:29pm: You know, I have always agreed that without funding professional development and someone readily available to help integrate the technology, all of the technology purchased runs the risk of being useless. I do not even want to talk about all of the video conferencing equipment purchased in my school that was never used. The object of this post is simply to get the conversation going around other ways to generate revenue ofr Ed Tech. Let's face it. Technology is only getting more expected and budgets to purchase it is often getting smaller. We have to look at ways around this issue and think outside of the box. I hope this posting gets the conversation going and gets us thinking of other ways than asking for money through grants or increases in budgets through tax increases or such.

Featured Blogger Comment by Sandra Wozniak on April 5, 2011 at 6:23pm: Back in the day, we sold our our kids for free tv's in every room, I think it was Whittle Communications. In exchange for showing them a 10 minute news show (with commercials), we received a tv for every room. Now, our district has just approved putting advertising on our busses. I agree that critical thinking is key and that we need to protect our public schools from being sold out.

That being said, I do not know how the average school will be able to keep up with providing the technology that our children need to prepare themselves for the workforce. All ideas should be considered and evaluated. Mobile technology will not be the answer for teaching writing.

Comment by Martin Sarkar on April 5, 2011 at 3:51pm: Laurence has got it, and I echo his sentiments.

Empower the teachers with the goal to build capacity.

As for the purchasing issue, has anyone done the research into the merits of leasing computers vs. buying? If the choice came down to teaching training with technology vs. buying computers, I would choose the former. Yet, I don't think it needs to come to that.