September 1997 — Features

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The Boulder Valley Internet Project: Lessons Learned

Collaboration to Gather Resources

Rogers found that, though the initiation of innovations such as The Jason Project Web Page within a centralized organization is less frequent than within a decentralized organization such as the Boulder Valley School District, centralization may encourage the implementation of innovations, once the innovation decision is made.[1, p380] This is due in part to the administrative vision that is clearly communicated to all stakeholders in a centralized organization, and to the resources that a centralized organization is able to gather in support of the innovation. Clearly, this was not the case in Boulder Valley. There was, and continues to be, little organizational slack (uncommitted resources available to the organization).

Original funding for the project came through the National Science Foundation. Project directors collaborated successfully with other projects such as the Annenberg/CPB Math and Science Project to provide release time, training and other incentives to newly trained teachers, as well as with the University of Colorado for technical support. As funding continues to be cut within the district, and as in-building technical resource people are reassigned to the classroom as a result, dependence on outside funding and support will continue to be an important factor in the success of the project. An elementary school principal commented on this situation:

  • "When we moved into the building, we all moved into a brand new Mac lab, and there were few people in the building who had ever worked on a Mac before. ëOh my goodness, what is a mouse?í We went through that communal loose bond the first couple of years, managing the computer lab on our own. Then, with planning time, money, the staff running special training, and the Annenberg Project, Internet training was really infused with teacher training. In the past two years, we had planning time like crazy, and we just bailed out and turned to a specialist. That part has come back, and we are all in there doing it, but now we have on-site available training and resources."

    • The school district, seeing the necessity of supporting the cadre of newly trained teachers eager to use telecommunications in the classroom, recently hired both a technical specialist and a computer repair person, at the district level, to respond to the needs of all 53 schools in the Boulder Valley. Though this may be an important step by the district in supporting the project, the lack of empathy between a perceived "district specialist" and the typical teacher g'es against the very core of Rogersí concept of homophily (likeness and empathy) between change agent and client. It remains to be seen how successful this change from reliance upon in-building, peer support to off-site, district support will be, and what its implications will be for the project as a whole.

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