Technology consultants come in all varieties --
here's how to pick the right one for your schools

By Kathleen Vail

About $2.2 billion is coming your way to connect your classrooms to the Internet and keep them hooked up. The 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act promised schools "universal service," which a federal and state board recently translated into deep discounts for telecommunications and Internet services (see our January 1997 e-wire report for details). The discounts will be paid for by communications companies (and passed along to the consumer).

Suddenly, you're standing on the Information Superhighway--unexplored territory for many school board members. Technology that seemed out of reach may now be affordable with the telecommunications discounts. And if your school district is like many, you're already plunking down millions in hard-won bond money to get new technology into the hands of your teachers and students.

Now your fledgling technology program is poised to explode. Dozens of decisions face you: cable or wireless, connections, video, software, hardware, wide-area networks, local-area networks, long-distance learning. . . . You're a deer in the scopes of technology salesmen, who want to convince you their products are just what you need.

What should you do? You might consider hiring a technology consultant to help steer you through the labyrinth of techno choices. A technology consultant can bring expertise and specialized knowledge that might be lacking on your staff. Houston technology consultant Stuart Herbst compares consultants to architects. If you were building a new school, Herbst says, you would select the best architect you could find to design it. "You need to follow the same path through the maze of technology planning," he says.

Consultants will do as much or as little as you're willing to pay for. Their services run the gamut from drawing up a technology plan for the district to helping evaluate and select hardware and software, arranging for teacher and administrator training, managing bids, and overseeing installation of systems. Consultants can work with your architect to make sure a new or renovated school building can handle the technology you've chosen. Also, they can audit your current technology plan to see if it's working as you intended.

But before you run out and sign on the dotted line, beware: Not all technology consultants are created equal. As school technology has grown, so has the number of people who want to tell you what to do with it. Not all of them know what they're doing, and not all of them are right for your school district. "There are a lot of bad apples out there," says Herbst.

To help you find the good apples--and protect yourself against unscrupulous or incompetent consultants--Electronic School sought advice from a number of technology consultants and school technology coordinators. Here's what they told us:

Make sure the consultant is not working for a hardware or software vendor. Consultants associated with vendors often are less expensive than independent ones; they make their money through a percentage of the sales of the products they sell you. Some bigger companies, like IBM, will throw in the consulting for practically nothing, says Herbst. Vendor consultants won't tell you if their products aren't going be appropriate for your plan or your school. Instead, they'll fit the plan to their products.

"It's a biased opinion," says James Carlini, a technology consultant in Chicago. "Your solution will be tied to their service."

If you're aware that the consultant is also a vendor and you're sure that the district wants to go with a certain product, that's fine. If not, choose an independent consultant, who will give you a range of vendors to make sure you get the system you want at a competitive price.

If you ask, most consultants will tell you if they are affiliated with vendors. As a precaution, Herbst suggests looking at the last three jobs the consultant performed to see if he or she had been repeatedly selling the same brands. And if you're really concerned, you can write into your contract with the consultant a clause specifying that the designer of the technology plan cannot sell the equipment for it.

Get references from the last three of the consultant's jobs. Calling school people who have worked with a consultant before is a good idea for several reasons. For starters, you can find out how long the consultant has been in business, an important factor when you're considering whether the consultant will go the distance with you or disappear halfway through the job. Reference checking also gives you the chance to find out if the consultant is a good fit with your district. And, you can find out if the consultant was comfortable working with a technology committee and if he or she got along with the district's technology coordinator.

Ask references if the consultant's work was done on time, suggests Herbst. Find out if the district encountered any surprises when the plan was being put in place, particularly surprises that cost extra money. Did the consultant save the district money? Was the consultant a help or a hindrance? Would the district consider hiring this person again?

While you talk to other school people, keep in mind that you want a plan that will fit your school, not a rehash of what was done at a district across town. Some consultants, says Carlini, take a cookie-cutter approach to school technology. "If he applies what was done at another school, it will be a lot less work for him," says Carlini.

Make sure you and the consultant understand each other. When you interview, have a fairly complete idea of what you want the consultant to accomplish, remembering that the consultant will be able to suggest things, as well. If you expect the consultant to make site visits, sit in on technology committee meetings, make board presentations, and talk to community members, you should spell out those expectations right away. That way, too, the consultant can give you an accurate estimate of what to charge you for services provided.

"Talk about the goals of the superintendent and the board members," says Richard Hardt, a technology consultant in Prairie Village, Kan. "Identify where a consultant can take you." Some school districts want an ongoing relationship with their consultant, says Hardt. Others want the consultant to come in for one purpose, such as installing a local area network in a building.

Find out whether the consultant specializes in a single area of technology. Like a vendor consultant, a single-note consultant is apt to suggest using the technology he or she knows best, rather than considering other options that might be less expensive or easier to use. "Look at the depth and breadth of what they've worked on," says Carlini. "You should get a person looking at the overall needs of the district."

Don't hire a "techno twit." That's what Gil Noble, assistant superintendent for technology at Plano, Texas, schools, calls someone who knows all about technology except how to make it work with people. A school technology plan is not just about nuts, bolts, and hardware, Noble says--it's also about people. Herbst agrees. "The most successful technology planners are the ones who are more concerned about professional development and training," he says. A consultant should take the time to understand the culture of your school district. That includes talking to teachers and administrators about their level of comfort with technology and their needs in the classroom. An expensive technology system with all the latest bells and whistles is worthless if the teachers won't use it.

Do hire a consultant with a background in education. Education is a specialized field, and consultants need to know something about what's going on the classroom before they can design an appropriate technology plan. "You can't impose the business model on education," says Herbst. Consultants who work with banks or insurance companies won't understand curriculum issues. "Find someone who knows school culture," says Noble. "Schools sometimes want to hire IBM, but they won't know the culture."

On the other hand . . .

Don't hire a consultant with a background in education. A consultant from the business world will bring a fresh eye and new ideas to the schools, says Carlini, who dissented from the other three consultants on this subject. "You won't have that creativity if someone has focused 30 years in education," he says. "You might have a better chance of getting someone good if you go outside education."

When it comes to putting a school technology plan in place--as these last two points show--authorities don't necessarily agree on the best way to go. And what works well in one school district might not be the answer in another. In the end, it's up to your board and staff, perhaps with a consultant's help, to chart the right course.

Sidebar: Help is on the way

Struggling to build your district's technology program? Hang on--a "toolkit" of strategies and information aimed at helping school board members get technology into their schools will be available at the end of April 1997.

Funded by a grant of $123,677 from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the project is being developed and managed by the National School Boards Association's Institute for the Transfer of Technology to Education (ITTE). You'll be able to receive the toolkit in several ways: through the ITTE website, by fax, and by mail. Topics to be covered include: planning for change and technology, getting community support, training for staff members and board members, setting technology policy, paying for technology, and planning facilities.

One goal of the project is to motivate school board members to become not just boosters for school technology but technology users themselves. To that end, the online toolkit will feature links to other sites that provide additional information about the topics, such as federal and state departments of education, NSF sites, public and private foundations, and others. If you were looking for ways to pay for a technology project, for example, you would find links to grant-giving organizations. The web site will also feature online seminars with experts available to answer questions and lead discussions.

"Technology is part of the world," says Hilary LaMonte, manager of the project for ITTE. "School board members need to be able to be active players."

-- Kathleen Vail is an associate editor of Electronic School.