Phase I: Build Your Team
Vision
Start with your Vision. You likely have a good idea of what you are trying to accomplish but it is essential to be able to communicate this clearly and concisely. We ran with the phrase "We believe students deserve the opportunity to leverage technology as a powerful tool to aid in personal growth, increase productivity, and foster active community participation...and this doesn't just happen between 8 and 3." This became our "elevator pitch" which was easy to repeat and share with others.
Feel free to borrow our phrase or create your own. Just remember to be concise and clear. This phrase is an important reminder throughout the process to make sure you are addressing the Access need in your community.
Work Group
Within your organization, you need to develop a group who can collaborate on your Access goals. No one can do it all alone and working with a team is best when talking about Access as well. Depending on your type of organization, you may need to consider a few different leaders who will likely be responsible for crucial future steps. Think about those with experience in change management and possible funding resources within your organization, but don't feel limited to these positions if there is a better fit. In our school district, our Digital Teaching & Learning Specialists, who have a history of innovative change management, lead the conversation on Access and coordinated when necessary with the curriculum and information technology departments.
Here are a few ideas for different organization types:
School District or Charter:
Consider working with leaders like your curriculum director, federal programs director, and/or digital learning director. Depending on the scale of your district or school, you may want to include a teacher, principal, and/or school librarian as well.
Public or Community Library:
Consider your lead librarian, community liaison, and/or the staff member who might be checking out resources.
Community or City Center:
Consider your local director or program manager. Also consider leaders who work closely with the group of people who most embodies the need.
Advisory Group
No matter what type of organization, you should also develop an advisory group to guide your work. This group should be diverse in the types of stakeholders with which your organization works. Consider those who are closely related to the work and those who are more distanced. This will provide unique and varied perspectives that will help prevent any personal bias from impacting your work.
Next, think about frequency of meeting for this group. At first you may want to just meet and bring these stakeholders up to speed on your project. This is a great time to get initial feedback and make sure you fully understand the need. Then consider a monthly or quarterly meeting schedule to support each phase of your project. Even though you may set up this group from the beginning, you may not meet frequently until the solution for your organization begins to take shape.
For our school district, we selected teachers, principals, curriculum director, and parents. If the age is appropriate, even consider adding students to your advisory group. When we met, we shared progress on the project and even solicited feedback on the documents and resources we were creating. The varied perspectives will provide a look at your solution that may be different than your own.