This is the third post in a six-part series. A by-product of the now-famous “apps budget” discussion that occurred during one of our ISTE 2012 focus groups was this question: How does this kind of expenditure affect the traditional purchasing cycle for schools? App Budgets’ Might Just Be the Tip of the Iceberg Those in the business of education know that the traditional hot time for purchasing in the standard buying cycle tends to be late spring or early summer, when budgets have been established based on (theoretical) enrollment numbers. And that probably also is true for large-ticket items such as learning management systems and software suites. The Five Key Phases of the District Buying Cycle But with the advent of the iPad lab (also a late spring expenditure, by the way) comes the need for apps to fill those labs. Since apps cost significantly less cost than traditional software packages, funding can come from sources other than the general capital fund. This presents the possibility of a year-round purchasing cycle for these items. As Linda Winter of the Winter Group (who co-hosted the ISTE focus groups with us) said during our EdNET 2012 Birds of Feature Roundtable session: “Back to [...]
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