This concept is usually applied in the context of a company attempting to break in to a particular market. For example, an obvious barrier would be the need for a massive investment in equipment, which could take years to recoup. In the context of a school, we can apply the idea to the taste of encouraging teachers to use the computing facilities.
You can think about this from the opposite end, so to speak. In one job interview I attended, I asked the headteacher what HE hoped for as for as computing was concerned. He replied that he wanted people banging on the doors of the computer rooms demanding to be let in.
Think of all the reasons that situation might arise — and why it might not. There has to be a DEMAND for using the facilities, and the SUPPLY has to be available too. Let’s focus on the latter. Why might the facilities not be available?
In schools I’ve worked in I have come across the following situations:
Computer rooms kept locked
Fairly reasonable especially as the toys were kept in the deputy heads’ office, which was open all the time. Except when it wasn’t, which was when they were having a meeting or teaching. In those circumstances, you were kept locked out of the computer rooms for an hour or so. I asked the school office stay if the keys could be kept with them instead, and they agreed. It made sense: there is someone in the school office every day.
Tech know-how
Another barrier to entry might be a lack of expertise. One way to lower that barrier to entry is to make the process of logging on to the school network, and then using it purposefully, very easy. In my case I did the following:-
Installed a menu system on the front end so as to make it easy, once you had logged in, to select the task you wished to perform;
Wrote a manual that had instructions on how to use one application per page, with one manual per computer;
Posted how-to notices around the computer rooms;
Stuck a card containing the login details on each computer.
The equipment
Yet another barrier to entry might be unreliability. In one school I joined, nobody would touch the school network. The reason, I discovered, was that it had a habit of turning itself off at random times with no warning. It turned out that one of the cables in the wall was broken. Once that had been fixed, “all” I had to do was convince colleagues that the system was now robust and reliable.