By Frederick Hess | Forbes

When assessing government funding for schools, the focus is usually “How much?” – with too little attention given to how effectively funds are being used. It’s time for a second look at how, when, and why schools buy what they do.

The question of how, when, and why schools buy stuff usually travels under the yawn-inducing label of “procurement,” and gets about as much attention as you’d expect. But this inattention has created huge problems, meaning that huge sums get wasted, educators get frustrated and schools have trouble getting their hands on goods and services that actually help.

Inattention has created huge problems, meaning that huge sums get wasted, educators get frustrated and schools have trouble getting their hands on goods and services that actually help.

Even as schools across the country spend billions each year on education technology, tech companies estimate that two-thirds of educational software licenses go unused. Some educators wind up relying on what they can assemble from Pinterest on a Sunday night. Why does this happen? And how can we do better? Here are three takeaways that can help address the disconnect.

School officials need to be clear as to how a new purchase actually helps teachers do their job.

An eternal complaint among educators is that schools waste money on ineffective programs and resources that they don’t want or need. Thomas Arnett, a one-time middle school math teacher and now a researcher at the Christensen Institute, explains that teachers view procurement as being more about creating new things to do than helping teachers accomplish tasks they’re already tackling.

If it’s not clear to teachers how a new purchase or program is going to help them do their job, they’ll (quite reasonably) stick with what they know.

If it’s not clear to teachers how a new purchase or program is going to help them do their job, they’ll (quite reasonably) stick with what they know. Decisions about outlays will be more likely to yield useful purchases if they start with a clear understanding of what teachers say they need to do their job.

Compliance concerns shouldn’t drive spending decisions.

Increased government funds could make a big difference for students, but experience teaches that they rarely do. In practice, concerns about spending restrictions, reporting requirements and government timelines mean that these pounds can wind up underwriting fragmented services, ineffective but familiar programs or faddish offerings.

As Junge and Krvaric explain, the complexity of government funding rules – and the risk-aversion of education officials – often lead to a reliance on programs that feel “safe,” including fragmented offerings that readily match government guidelines, familiar programs that don’t get audited or new offerings that enjoy a clear wink-wink endorsement.

Government officials could help by simplifying spending rules; in the meantime, schools need to more aggressively explore what’s allowed and resist the temptation to stick with what’s “safe” over what’s successful.

Education officials need to engage with vendors.

School systems are constantly inundated with vendor pitches. But experiences with vendors overpromising and under-delivering leave many school officials leery and inclined to keep them at arms-length. The ironic result, as former school HR administrator turned ed-tech CEO Lauren Dachille observes, is that when it comes time to buy new textbooks, assessments, information management or pretty much anything else, those making the purchase are frequently only familiar with what’s on offer from the vendors with the biggest and pushiest sales teams.

One consequence is that a given “request for proposals” (RFP) tends to include specific requirements that reflect the “features” list of well-known products, unintentionally excluding less familiar, more customisable, cheaper and (frequently more user-friendly) products of smaller or newer vendors. Rather than view vendors as an inconvenient blight, school officials should regard them as a resource and as potential partners.

Government funds are intended to help schools enhance learning, make schools safe and help students catch up. All of these require substantial outlays on technology, supplies and hardware. As school officials make these purchases, they have an obligation to ensure that they’ll actually be used and won’t languish on the shelf, like too many textbooks and technologies from days past.

This article was written by Frederick Hess from Forbes and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.

Google Meet is a video conferencing tool which will enable you to host online meetings between your colleagues, parents and pupils. If your school uses Office365, please see our post on Microsoft Teams.

When you sign into Google Meet with your Google For Education account, you will see this screen:

From here, you can either join a meeting, using a meeting code, or you can start a new meeting for others to join. It will ask you to name the meeting and then will give you an access code, which you can share with others. you can also email users to invite them to join the meeting. When other people access the site, they can either click the invite link, or join the meeting with the appropriate code. Also, until September 30th, you can create a meeting link from your Google Classroom. Go to your Class Settings and then choose “Generate Meet link” from the settings menu.

Using the controls at the bottom of the screen, you can mute or un-mute your microphone, end the meeting, turn your camera on or off, turn on captioning, or present content.

Choosing “Present Now” will show you a menu, from which you can choose to share an entire screen, or a single application. The difference being that when you change between different applications, meeting attendees will see this when you share your screen, but not when you only share a window.

Something helpful to note, is that if you add the meeting link to the “Conferencing” section when you create an event in Google Calendar, you can make the meeting a recurring event and the link will remain the same each time.

Microsoft Teams is an online platform which can be used to facilitate communication (including video conferencing) within your school. If your school uses Google’s G-Suite, please see our guide on Google Meet.

On this platform, you can work directly with other people, or organise your school into teams. A team might be a class, a group of staff, or any other way you might like to categorise the people who use the platform. Please note, that one person can be a member of many teams, so a teacher might be part of a class team and a teaching staff team.

Simply log into Teams using your Office 365 email account to start accessing and communicating with your school.

To create a new team, select “Teams” from the panel on the left. At the bottom on the panel that opens up, you can click on “Join or create a team” to start making a new team.

If you have an existing Office 365 group, you can turn it into a team by selecting “Create from…” and then “Office 365 group”. Otherwise, choose “Build a team from scratch”. Choose “Private” if you intend to invite people to the team, or choose “Public” if anyone in your school should be able to find and join the team.

Now that you have a team set up, you can create meetings for them to join, share files, or start a team conversation. To schedule a meeting, go to “Calendar” and choose “New Meeting”. You can invite people to the meeting individually, or you can find the team in the “Add Channel” section to make the meeting accessible to the whole team. When users/groups are added as attendees to the meeting, they will receive an email notification with an invitation link.

Once you are in the meeting, you will see this screen:

When other people join the meeting, you will be able to see them in the People pane. Using the controls on the bottom of the screen, you can turn your video on and off, mute and un-mute your microphone, share content and start a text conversation.

When you click on the “Share” button, you will see the above menu, which will allow you to select which content to share. The screens in the “Desktop” column, will allow you to present your whole screen, and meeting attendees will see everything on that screen, as opposed to screens in the “Window” column, which will only show one program or window, even if you switch to a different one on your computer. Next is PowerPoint, where you can present an open presentation, or browse for one to open. Finally is Whiteboard, a collaborative screen, where you can write or draw freehand.