In a recent symposium on facility planning held by the U.S. Department of Education, experts and practitioners agreed on the need for careful and holistic planning before making major infrastructure investments. The group concurred that the plan should be:

• Flexible and open-ended enough to allow for growth,
• Attentive to the needs of all students and teachers,
• Affordable enough to start implementing in the near term.

They emphasized that versatility is an important feature in system design and that a plan that calls for multipurpose equipment is more likely to keep up with rapid changes in technology and applications than single-purpose purchases.

Experts also suggested designing systems with the classroom, rather than a technology lab, as the basic unit. This has been shown to lead to better and more frequent use of the technologies, as well as more effective incorporation of the tools into the curriculum.

Finally, the group stressed that in addition to channels and hardware, technology design must consider another, less publicized kind of infrastructure - the web of "people that must craft the service that exists on the channels," said Chris Dede. "That infrastructure is getting little funding."

According to the facility planning team of Noblesville Schools in Nobelsville, IN, it is important to know the following before you begin:

• How do you want people to function?
• How do you want students to interact with the technology?
• Computer labs - yes or no?
• How do you want teachers to interact with the technology?
• Should there be a computer on every teacher’s desk?
• Should there be a telephone on every teacher’s desk?
• Should there be an integrated voice mail system?
• Will teachers have the ability to project their computer’s display onto a classroom screen?
• Video Network - Yes or No?
• Where is access needed?
• How will centralized storage and access to media sources be addressed?

T.H.E. Journal December 1996 "Voice, Video, Data, and Education: Planning a Building’s Technology Infrastructure" Debbie Perisho, Dr. Ronald W. Costello, Noblesville Schools, Noblesville, Indiana. LINK

Finally, there are several lessons learned from the projects of the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) which are useful to districts in building their factility plans.

Successful projects had a strategy for dealing with the challenge of rapid technological change. First, it is important to monitor technological change and assess what is critical for the project’s service versus what is hyperbole or "nice to have". Second, caution is advised by many TIIAP project directors about the most advanced "leading edge" technologies, sometimes dubbed "bleeding edge" technologies. Many of the TIIAP projects have adopted technology that is slightly behind the most advanced in order to take advantage of lower costs, and the stability that is often associated with technology that has a track record. Third, it is recommended that a group try to assess the anticipated life cycle for a piece of equipment of software and ask if it is long enough to meet the project’s needs.

One determining factor in deciding which level of technology may be appropriate was to ask a number of questions:

• What are the technical skills and resources of the organizations?
• Can the organization manage the technology and repairs, or will they have to rely on a vendor?

Practical lessons learned:

• Seek out competent technical people who are able to speak in plain English to those who may lack technical expertise.
• Engineers at local telecommunications companies can be very helpful in teaching project groups the "tricks of the trade."
• Many state and local government agencies have significant database expertise and can be an important source of help.
• Watch out for so-called "technophiles" within your organization or end-user organizations. They often want to simply play with expensive technological "toys" and cannot necessarily be counted upon the make wise recommendations.
• Be careful in dealing with beta products (that is, products that are still in a testing stage), or products that are not supported by a vendor.
• Leasing equipment may be an appropriate choice under some conditions, and can help an organization from begin locked into an equipment purchase that might soon become obsolete.
• Although donated equipment can be very welcome, there may be a downside in terms of repairs.
• If possible, try to standardize terminal equipment within your organization. Having to install new software or a new service on twenty-five personal computers, each from different equipment manufacturers and with a different configuration, can be frustrating, costly, and time-consuming.
• For many groups, it makes sense to out-source some technology-related work. This should be done locally.

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