Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

I always keep this quote in mind when working with school districts on modern learning environments that bring together devices, audiovisual tools and flexible furniture to foster collaboration and student-centered learning. Through our Blueprint to Design™ program, CDW helps schools with each step of a modern technology implementation, and I’m on many consultation calls with educators. They bring great passion and ideas to these conversations, but it occurred to me that the process would be even more effective if educators asked themselves a few key questions first.

The first bookmobile hit the road in 1839 to serve students in rural communities far from any library. Today, school buses are bringing an even richer source of information — the internet — to students in underserved areas.

My wife and I are looking into renovating our home, but the truth is that we don’t know where to start. Do we need to bring in an architect, or can we work directly with a contractor? The problem boils down to an old truism: You don’t know what you don’t know. I frequently see a similar sort of confusion when school leaders set out to revamp their learning spaces. That’s why we created the CDW Blueprint to Design™ initiative.

Your school’s one-to-one program now has laptops for every student. Check. All of your learning materials are digitized and computer accessible. Check. The teachers have all gone through professional training to take advantage of all the new tech possibilities in the classroom. Check. Your modern learning environment is ready to go. Nope. Transformation in the…

Although school districts around the country are finalizing their applications for the last year in the current five-year E-rate funding cycle, the government hasn’t yet announced how the program’s funding mechanism will work going forward. E-rate, the common name for the Schools and Libraries Program of the Universal Service Fund, provides K–12 schools with funding…