Continually evaluate the effectiveness of what you're doing.

You'll need to establish both formal and informal strategies for monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of your technology initiative. Data-gathering should address a number of questions: How well is the equipment working? How frequently are problems reported? What kinds of problems are occurring? How satisfied is the staff with the technical assistance and troubleshooting help they receive? How many teachers are using the new technologies? How often? In what ways? What are teachers' perceptions about the relevance and effectiveness of staff development? What are teachers' concerns about the impact of new approaches on their classroom routines? What are parents saying and feeling about the new approaches? What changes are you seeing in classroom instruction, in students' behaviors, and--eventually, but remember, this will take time, probably several years--in student outcomes?

Make strategic decisions about upgrades.

Almost as soon as you make your technology purchases, newer, more powerful versions of your brand new hardware and software will no doubt appear on the market. You'll receive upgrade notices almost as often as you get credit card offers. Occasionally software upgrades are free, but not usually.

When should you upgrade? Always make this decision based on your instructional goals and your staff's assessment of how well the current arrangements are addressing those goals. If you do upgrade, be sure to provide time and technical assistance to help your staff adapt to the changes.

Revisit your technology plan every three to five years.

Your technology planning process should include provisions for reviewing and updating the plan at least every three to five years. Though planning shouldn't take as much time after the first cycle, be sure to go through all the steps again, revisiting the instructional goals, updating the audit, assessing infrastructure needs, investigating new products, considering staffing, security, and facilities arrangements, etc. If you've been collecting assessment data all along, updating the plan will be a much easier task.