newly ancient

Breaking out of the blog penalty box (next hiatus is a red card), I’m ready to hit a few more words through the goal of change strategy. Since I last wrote about creating meaningful change through the bureaucracy of school, my project has been moving forward very well, both within and outside the walls of school. After identifying and collaborating with an ally, I have begun on the next step of creating any meaningful change: assessing the need and possibility for change.

This critical step is what keeps you from working going through tons of effort to get a new program adopted district-wide with administrative support, only to see the program flop. Recently, there has been a rash of articles about unsuccessful change, whether through 1:1 laptop programs or web 2.0 tools. By analyzing the need for change, you can keep your fragile idea of the list of broken failures.

Assessing the need for change involves turning off distractions and thinking about why this change needs to happen. Though your mileage may vary, I highly recommend you set pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) and set your thoughts down on “paper.” When doing so, your goal is twofold: look inside yourself to see why you want this change and look inside the system and see why it needs this change. Use these questions as starting points:

1. How are things done currently? (before the change)
2. What is wrong with how things are done currently? (If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it)
3. Why is this an important change? You only have so much time, spend it wisely Sure, you could advocate for all school meals to be virtually tracked, but wouldn’t it be a better use of focus to get a computer in every classroom?
4. How do you want things to be done? When everything is done, what will things look like?
5. How will this change fix the current problems?

If you have good answers to all the questions and are confident that this change is needed, you are ready to move forward in your change process. Plus, these answers have you prepared for the kind of questions which will come from the naysayers in your cause.

Once you have established the need for change, you must asses the possibility for change. Here, you need to ask yourself if the change will be adopted. You’ll need to take a look at the obstacles in your way and how you want students to use the new system, whether it will work or not. These guiding questions can help you along the way:

1. How can this change be accomplished? (step-by-step list of who you need to talk to, what needs to happen)
2. How much money will this change cost the system? (Write a negative sum if it will save money)
3. How much time will it take me and my allies to affect this change?
4. What obstacles stand in the way of this change being affected?
5. What problems might there be in the changed system?
6. What will opponents of this change have to say against it?

These can be hard questions to answer, but they help you in the long run. (Better safe than sorry) By knowing the obstacles, you can avoid them. I have put together the questions on a simple worksheet for you to fill out for your project, which you can download below.

Download the worksheet, including pdf, .doc, and .pages.

My Project

I am working on getting my school district to adopt system-wide Google Apps for Education. Primarily, I want this to be adopted so students can easily use Google Docs for collaboration. Far too often, we have network and file format issues which keep effective collaboration from happening. If you would like to follow along with my project, I regularly post updates to Twitter along with blog posts about the subject. Not wanting to be a hypocrite, I have filled out my own worksheet to come up with these answers:

Download my answers as a pdf.

Why

1. How are things done currently? Students work on documents using Microsoft Office on school computers. To work on files at home, they email the documents to themselves. Documents must be converted to older formats for most students. Collaboration is done by emailing documents.
2. What is wrong with how things are done currently?
   • Students need MS Office at home to work on files
   • Conversion to older formats is hard
   • Students often have wrong version of file for collaborative projects
   • Network storage crashes, meaning students canʼt access documents to work on them
3. Why is this an important change? Word processing is critical to almost every class in school. Everything from short paragraphs to grad challenge papers are done with documents. The network storage failures inconvenience many students, causing them to lose critical time and turn in papers late. Collaboration is hard because group members need to sync changes.
4. How do you want things to be done? Students should be encouraged to create, edit, and share documents using Google Docs. Every student would be given a Google Apps account when they enroll.
5. How will this change fix the current problems?
   • Students will not need any special software, just a web browser
   • No filer conversions will be needed
   • A single copy of each project will be stored on a web server, which all group members work on
   • Storage is backed by Google’s network expertise and backups

How?

1. How can this change be accomplished?
   1. Roll out a beta test to selected students.
   2. Convince key decision makers of the need for change.
   3. Present at a board meeting and secure vote of confidence.
   4. Work with techies to set up Google Apps
   5. Train students and teachers
2. How much money will this change cost the system? savings of 1,000+ dollars
3. How much time will it take me and my allies to affect this change? ~25 hours
4. What obstacles stand in the way of this change being affected?
   • fear of new technologies/web 2.0
   • ignorance of need for change
   • reluctance of support from techies
   • filtering/access/privacy issues
5. What problems might there be in the changed system? Students without internet access can’t access documents. Admins could lose some control over content.
6. What will opponents of this change have to say against it? We cannot trust an external company with student data. We will not be abled to control students access. Students won’t have access. The service could go down, causing data loss.

What strategies have you found to be successful in creating change? What did you discover by answering these questions?

This is part 2 of a series on how to affect change within school systems. Part 1 was about finding an ally in change.