Tips For Choosing School Edtech Solutions

There are various competing solutions to sift through, and significant time and effort are needed to evaluate them. Things are made even more difficult by the added pressure of ensuring that the vast sum of money your school is about to spend will be invested wisely.

Getting started

Let’s break it down and outline a few of the positive points and initial steps to help you overcome any roadblocks to action.

• Ideally, your school has set out a framework for its digital strategy, so you are clear on your overall objectives.
• You have specific requirements for each area, which means you already know what you are looking for in any potential new solutions.
• Making a list of contenders and finding evidence of how they perform in other schools will reveal which ones stand out enough to make it onto your shortlist.
• The trial period is when you can test the product’s capabilities. Don’t be afraid to ask the vendor questions to help you decide whether it is a good fit for your school.

The evidence

It’s common to read online product reviews to get a steer on whether something is a good purchase or not. So, the next thing to do is collect third-party evidence for your shortlisted software solutions. There are four types to look for:

• Users’ impressions and anecdotes – from blog posts, articles, testimonials, videos and recommendations.
• Descriptive evidence of potential impact – from vendors’ marketing materials and white papers.
• Comparison charts and white papers – this correlational evidence compares users and non-users of a solution (but note that you cannot reliably apply results to different contexts).
• Causal evidence – dedicated research papers, peer-reviewed articles and independently commissioned reports will be the most insightful (but rare).

Regardless of whether your information is from the vendor, other schools in your area or peers on social media, their views and experiences will help to guide you.