Outfitting a classroom with shiny new technology is great, but if educators can't keep the equipment up to date, much of the luster can be lost, and then students can become disheartened and teachers discouraged. Now the technology director of a regional service agency in Washington state has devised a low-cost strategy intended to beat the predictable obsolescence that often afflicts classroom technology.

The Sustainable Classroom Grant Project is meant to strike a balance between the perennial budget concerns of public-school educators and the swift pace of technological advancement by creating a replicable model for the integration of classroom technology that can remain viable beyond the three- to five-year obsolescence cycle of most computers.

The initiative--funded at $8,400 per classroom--is the pet project of Debbie Tschirgi, director of educational technology for Vancouver-based Educational Service District 112, one of nine regional service agencies serving Washington schools. Her offices have partnered with vendors and local resellers to design a classroom model that will be piloted in five classrooms this fall.

Each of the five classrooms will be equipped with one computer bought by the district; a SMART Board interactive whiteboard and peripherals from SMART Technologies; a Hitachi CP-RS55 digital projector; a Califone Sound System; an AverVision 300 digital document camera; an Avocent Longview Wireless Extender for the projector; an eInstruction wireless response system; an annual subscription to eBoard, an online educational learning environment; and other peripherals and software solutions that are requested to ensure a successful implementation of the project.

The companies whose products will be used in the pilot classrooms already had won bids to provide technology to ESD 112's schools and have "enthusiastically donated" products and services to Tschirgi's project. Tschirgi also has set aside some of her own department's funding to supplement the project as needed.

Tschirgi is no newcomer to strategic thinking. In 1995--as the technology boom was still in ascendancy--she wrote a grant proposal to underwrite the development of high-tech classrooms in which technology supported teaching and learning to meet Washington's academic learning requirements. Her proposal was funded.

"At the heart of that technology grant was the one-computer-to-every-four-students ratio," Tschirgi said. "What we set out to prove was that we could change classroom cultures by providing teachers with high-quality professional development around best practices and technological integration."

The name of the grant was TELDEC, an acronym for "Technology and the Essential Learnings: Developing Effective Classrooms."

"We did the right thing; we proved that technology could be used [to support] the curriculum [successfully]," Tschirgi said. "But now we know that it was not the best thing: It was not replicable. Districts without the funding couldn't replicate the model, because of the high [degree] of classroom access to technology. It was not replicable, and it was not sustainable."