- Much of this week’s work and readings focus on setting the stage for Enterprise Architecture. Typically, school districts have maintained separate plans for technology and the district. For example, a district creates a “district education plan” and then has a separate “technology plan.”
- Moving forward, do you think this is still a good practice, or should they be combined? Please provide a rationale for your decision.
I think it is a good decision to have a separate and more specific technology plan, because technology is one major facet of business that is just too in depth to include with education goals. Just like there is some sort of separate budgeting plan or strategic business plan, that operates within an education plan, technology needs its own plan. That being said, I don’t think that it should be created in isolation without regard to an overall education plan. From my understanding, a district’s education plan would include goals for student learning, methods of reaching those goals, and details of those plans. It may include some plans for paying for all of it (that would come out of an organizational budget plan) and probably details how to use technology to meet educational goals. A technology plan should focus on educational goals in relation to infrastructure, resources, and what needs to be purchased, retired, recycled, or expanded. I think an Enterprise Framework Architecture provides room for both plans, within an architecture that centers around the school or distict’s overall vision.