It is no different in schools across the nation. Customer relations (student and parent relations) are important to schools. Faster and better service (better education, more knowledge in real time, and higher scores) are crucial to a school's survival. And with all the items (especially items that require longer than one year follow-up documentation) that need to be inventoried, what school could turn away better inventory systems? Some schools across the nation are utilizing PDAs in the classroom already, many through collaborative studies with PDA makers and universities or other research oriented organizations.

But how does a school district (public, private, independent, etc.) make the move to begin purchasing PDAs of any brand and model, and how does a district determine that PDAs even should be purchased?

I am a District Instructional Technology Teacher for the Klein ISD (Independent School District), a suburban/rural school district north of Houston, TX. In our district, the move to integrate technology into the classroom is happening at a tremendous rate compared to our rollout of services and programs in the past. With grants, bond money, and a surge of technological focus, our district is rapidly putting its students and schools on the proverbial technology map. And we have just begun to encounter the decision making process involved in the PDA movement.

In the past, our district as a whole has been very conservative by waiting, watching, and studying results of other districts' methods in just about every category imaginable. Our district is largely residential, so business tax dollars don't contribute to our district as they do in many other nearby districts. It has been smart to watch and learn before proceeding. Although there is an awakening to doing things a new way, some of that conservativeness is warranted, especially with regard to valuable technology dollars. With this history and perspective in mind, our district has begun to move forward with evaluating the use of Personal Digital Assistants for use within our district. It will be exciting to learn what other districts in our area are doing, and I hope to report that information once school starts again this month.

Typically, our district has established a standard as a baseline for what technology can be purchased. This sound decision is based on the fact that certain technology will work on our servers, while some of the decision was made due to certain software applications not working on Windows 2000 computers. Additionally, much of the decision is based on security issues of running on a secure network.