RE: Six Things Principals Are Thinking with #Edtech

Not having an administrator background, I cannot say if this is accurate. Perhaps my administrator colleagues can either affirm or deny the claims in this article. I can attest to the fact that these "Six Things" go through my head when I'm being pitched Ed Tech.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-20-six-things-principals-are-thinking-when-they-get-pitched-edtech

It all comes down to cost

I can relate to the first point in the article above, "Which of my million problems does this solve?" This is rarely the first point raised by administrators in my experience. First and foremost is cost. If it is not feasible to purchase, then it is hard to get invested in the technology being presented.

A prominent example of this was a demonstration I attended on a 3D/VR interactive learning system. My personal opinion on this device was it was probably going to be $1,000 to $1,500 per device. With this in mind I thought maybe we could purchase a small set of these, perhaps 5. This price-point is still a very steep sell in the money strapped education world. However, all I could do was assume as the vendor would not quote me a price until after the demonstration. In retrospect, this was probably the biggest red flag I should have seen about the pricing.

I soon found out that the minimum cost per device was $10,000. I was told by the vendor that other schools around my area had purchased a whole lab of 30 of these machines. I quickly verified this with those districts and sure enough, through fundraising, private donations, and grants, those districts were able to afford these devices. However this was prohibitively expensive in this case.

I felt like all of the time and resources I diverted into learning about this product, researching the educational value and opportunities, and scheduling the demonstration were a waste. If I was able to find out the price point before starting, I could have easily avoided this whole experience.

Vendors, Please Quote Us the Price First

There are many vendors that use the "strategy" of "Contact us for pricing" or "Let us schedule a live session" before quoting the price. I can only speak to the education world, but I have assume that time is far to valuable of a resource for companies and individuals to waste on sales pitches that may or may not have a use in your circumstances only to find out its priced out of your budget to begin with.

I am NOT thinking of any vendor in particular, but just know that you are driving away business by not listing your prices.