IS REMOTE LEARNING HAPPENING BECAUSE OF, OR IN SPITE OF YOUR EFFORTS?
Building a successful edtech program is much like building a ladder. Before you can climb that ladder, you need to have four stable legs. They are:
- Sound curriculum and content choices,
- Hardware that adapts to the curriculum and stands up to the rigors of students,
- Technical infrastructure and support to address your ongoing needs, and
- Effective professional development that empowers educators to transform learning.
All too often, however, schools don’t adequately build that stable foundation, and the result is their inability to climb the ladder. As recently as 2017, Project RED went so far as to quantify national averages for the typical investment in each of these areas. Along with some smaller areas such as wireless and datacenter, these areas combined equal $493/year per student:
- Hardware: $118/year per student
- Technical Support: $75/year per student
- Software and Digital Content: $128/year per student
- Professional Development: $133/year per student
Now, more than ever, schools are scrambling to equip students with devices for remote instruction, but have no accurate or objective method to track if remote learning is actually happening. Merely being logged into a Zoom classroom doesn’t mean a child is paying attention.
There’s an old adage that reads, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Representing 25% of the annual spend for most schools’ technology and curriculum budgets, software and digital content represents an area that, for the most part, school officials have been traditionally unable to measure if resources are used, and exactly how much they’re used, if at all. But mere reliance on “engagements”, “hits” or “click-throughs” as many companies have tried, fails to give edtech leaders the data they need to measure fidelity of their efforts.
The Dollars and “Sense”
PAPERbasket helps educators improve the fidelity of their edtech resources, it also helps officials control edtech budgets. According to EdWeek, 2 out of every 5 edtech district officials rank budget their top concern for the next five years
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More than 50% of instructional materials are now being acquired in digital formats.
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The typical school system spends $75-150 per student across more than 100 subscription-based platforms for content and functionality
By identifying unused and underused resources, school officials can typically save $15-30 per student annually by tracking actual usage
Now, an approach crafted by EdTech veterans
Our Mission
We help educators maximize the return on their edtech spend
History
Having seen this problem firsthand for many years, and seeing the lack of viable solutions in the market, PAPERbasket set out to help level the playing field. By knowing exactly how many licenses and hours your software and digital resources are being used at school, at home, or anywhere in between, officials can be empowered to make more strategic decisions about their digital learning efforts. The critical element is knowing exactly how much time was “active” and how much time was not.
