Having a uniform set of platforms in a school or district helps everyone learn how to best utilize what is available. Making a drastic change to that can be a jarring, unwelcome move for most, even when it’s deemed a necessary step forward.
Here we speak with Kathi Kersznowski, educational technology specialist at Washington Township Public Schools in New Jersey, about how she helped her district switch from Microsoft to Google, some of the steps she took to ensure a smooth transition, and what other schools and districts should know if they are looking to make a switch as well.
Kathi was recently recognized for Best Example of Professional Development at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.
One Small Step for a District
The idea to switch from one technological ecosystem to another doesn’t come lightly, but every great change starts with a spark. Even if the change is small, it can have massive ramifications if everyone is not on the same page.
“We got a new superintendent last year, and the new superintendent came from a Google district,” says Kersznowski. “He wanted us to be a Google district as well. So we knew it was coming. We had a year to do a turnaround. I have a team of three other people that work with me, it’s just the four of us. We were tasked with making this happen.”
WTPS is a district of nearly 8,000 students with six elementary schools, three middle schools, one large high school, and two preschools, so that transition seemed daunting at first.
“There’s so many people to train, so many to teach,” recalls Kersznowski. “It’s new for the teachers, it’s new for the students. Then we realized it’s new for the secretaries and the administrative assistants as well. We had a lot of people to get this knowledge into. It’s a big shift when you go from Microsoft to Google. Word translates to Docs, and Excel to Sheets, so there’s compatibility with a lot of products, but it works very differently in many ways.”
Embracing “Google Day”
Switching to another technology ecosystem isn’t uncommon. However, some districts may be put off from making the change because of the overall headache it may produce. So how did Kersznowski and her team overcome typical challenges associated with a shift in technology for a whole district?
“I’ll tell you what the best thing is that other districts could do if they want to replicate this,” says Kersznowski. “We had Google turned on last year. The official switchover date wasn’t until the middle of the summer, but we had Google turned on by February 16th of last year, which was a full day in-service for the whole district. As a tech team, we asked for permission to have that day, then we commandeered it and called it Google Day. We wore shirts that had Google day on them. We spent months planning for what this was going to look like, but the fact that we had it turned on last February gave us a sandbox where we could play with it. The only things we didn’t turn on were Gmail and Calendar because those were still running in Microsoft Outlook.”
What was the benefit of having extra time to work with the Google ecosystem?
“With Google Day, we wanted to find out what the core things were that every single person is going to need to know to survive in Google,” says Kersznowski. “We identified those things as Google Drive, the Chrome OS, Google Calendar and Gmail, and the overall app suite. Those were the core things that everyone had to take a session in. We offered live sessions and we offered recorded sessions. Everybody had to take at least two live sessions. We wanted people in person to interact and discuss.”
And how do you deal with pushback?
“Change is hard,” says Kersznowski. “So it would have been the same pushback if we had gone from Google to Microsoft or anything else. People are resistant [to change]. But the fact that we got them PD and training and support so early on, and gave them a place to play, work, and learn, [that was helpful for the transition.]”
Making such a big change for a school, let alone a whole district, can be a daunting task to undertake. But, as Kersznowski and her team have proven, with proper planning and plenty of time to learn the technology, you can set your district up for success as well.
