This framework was created with education community members to help ensure that educational leaders, technology specialists, teachers, students, and families are all part of the evaluation and adoption process for placing emerging technologies in PK-12 classrooms. We engaged an Emerging Technology Advisory Board through Educator CIRCLS based out of The Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences (CIRCLS) and gathered additional feedback from researchers, policy experts, the edtech community, educators, and families to ground our work through a community of experts. This framework is specifically designed to include community members in the process of making informed evaluation and procurement decisions and outlines the important criteria to consider during three stages of emerging technology implementation: (1) initial evaluation, (2) adoption, and (3) post-adoption. Each criterion has specific questions that can be asked of decision makers, district leaders, technology researchers and developers, educators, and students and families, as well as resources and people who might serve as resources when answering these questions. Please note that not all of these questions will apply in every context. Additionally, it may be beneficial to ask some questions to multiple members of the community. For example, questions listed under the procurement decision makers and district leaders section can usually also be asked of educators.

This is a living document to help guide evaluation and procurement processes — it is intended to evolve and inspire discussions. We seek feedback on the framework to inform future iterations of the guidance it contains. Please fill out this feedback form or contact us with your thoughts or if you would like to use this framework.

Suggested Citation: Ruiz, P., Richard, E., Chillmon, C., Shah, Z., Kurth, A., Fekete, A., Glazer, K., Pattenhouse, M., Fusco, J., Fennelly-Atkinson, R., Lin, L., Arriola, S., Lockett, D., Crawford-Meyer, V., Karim, S., Hampton, S., & Beckford, B. (2022). Emerging technology adoption framework: For PK-12 education. [Educator CIRCLS white paper]. Digital Promise. https://doi.org/10.51388/20.500.12265/161

This work was developed by the Educator CIRCLS Emerging Technology Advisory Board and supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number #2021159. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.