Musings about Web Conferencing

I attended the first web conference for this course on 7/16/11 at 10:00 AM. I like the idea of web conferencing as we use it on our campus to have some of our district wide grade level meetings. I believe it is a great way to meet other colleagues who are attending our online courses. It is a good time to collaborate and get needed information for questions we may have. We can help each other find the answers as well as having our professor, Dr. Abernathy, available for answering said questions. This day there were only two of us who showed up for the conference. Dr. Abernathy had been called upon to proctor an exam offered there on the Lamar Campus. We were not able to have video available that morning as a consequence but were able to type our conversations in. Dr. Abernathy was checking in periodically to see what was taking place and later answered our questions through the discussion board. I understand there can be extenuating circumstances and was not able to get in on the rest of our conferences.

Technology Action Plan

Those designated with these colors are all personnel/stakeholders responsible for integrating technology and instructional and organization leadership from the district office to the campus and classroom.

Development of an organization chart integrating technology

Board of Trustees:

Responsibilities for the Board of Trustees include making sure that state and district policies are carried out. They sanction the funds for curriculum needs, disbursement of funds for bills and give approval of budgets. They also give authorization for funding appropriate technology, e.g. equipment and programs.

Superintendent:

Responsibilities of the Superintendent include: policy administration; serves as an advisor to Board of Trustees; gives recommendations for purchasing of educational needs including curriculum; and makes recommendations for purchasing technology, both equipment and software.

Assistant Superintendent for Administration:

Responsibilities of this position include: providing needed curriculum to teachers while ensuring said curriculum is being taught on all appropriate campuses. Provides benchmark and curriculum based test materials as well as disaggregates the data attained. Provides professional development per needs identified from data and for utilizing technology in all aspects of our campuses.

Principals:

Responsibilities include: providing instructional leadership; purchasing of necessary materials; ensurance of staff following the TEKS, curriculum scope and sequence; ensuring teachers are utilizing technology supplied by the district the best way possible; monitoring progress of teachers and students through observation; and oversee expenditures of monies provided to the campus.

Campus Technologist:

Responsibilities include: aide in execution; campus professional development; and campus technical support.

Campus Teachers and Staff:

Responsibilities include: making certain students needs are being met; utilizing TEKS in appropriate manner; making use of technology software and materials provided.

Assitant Superintendent of Finances:

Responsibilities of this position include: To oversee budgets of individual departments and make recommendations for budget needs to the Superintendent. This includes the budget and budget needs of the Technology Services Department.

Technology Services Director:

Responsibilities include: to oversee the district’s technology budget; needs; and applications. Provides teachers with necessary technology including; hardware, software, and equipment maintenance.

Network Administrator and Desktop Support:

Responsibilities include: Fulfilling job description appropriate to upkeep and maintenance of technology; problem solve any issues arising with technology employed by the district; and any other needs appropriate as deemed by the district and Technology Services Director.

 

Professional Development Planning

Reviewing week three’s information and looking over our campus’ CIP there are some areas that need to be addressed as well as some areas of success. Our educational staff feels that they can appropriately make use of technology in the areas of administrative tasks, word processing, and at least basic internet communication as well as research. Our students are receiving the required TEKS based computer instruction. Our internet access is appropriate for the level of use we and we have appropriate filtering in place. There is adequate staff and budget to meet the needs of our system. Teachers on our campus have a desktop and laptop available to them in each classroom. We have two computer labs on our campus for whole class usage and there is a pod of four student computers in each classroom. There are a limited number of Smart boards on our campus with the majority located in our PPCD classrooms which are used on a daily basis. I believe we have adequate technology available for our staff to truly integrate it not just in their classrooms but also their lessons and curriculum.

I believe that one area that needs to be addressed over the majority of campus has to be technology integration. Our staff at least uses technology for the basics but it is not an in depth as it should be. Lessons incorporating technology to bring to life our lessons and to make them more vibrant is needed. With budget cuts taking place I believe we will need to be even more creative with the use of our technology. Using technology in our lessons is where we will focus our technology action plan and to keep costs down by doing professional development on campus as much as possible.

1. Need to be addressed—appropriate use of technology hardware in the classroom.

Each teacher has a laptop cart that includes: laptop with wireless internet connection; document camera; and projector in their classroom. Help teachers with their fluency on the use of these components in their classroom.

Professional Development—have teachers on campus who are fluent on these components to lead a team based day of formal training. These “experts” will meet with teams in available team classrooms to go over the usage of these components of technology.

2. Need to be addressed—appropriate understanding and use of the STaR Chart data. To develop a better understanding of this data source and apply it to our technology needs is important.

Professional Development—lead in sharing the power-point presentation developed earlier in this course. Allow time for teachers to collaborate over the data provided and provide a time of Q and A lead by our administration team. This facilitation time should produce a better understanding of the data and lead to recommendations to our CTP(campus technology plan) regarding technology use.

3. Need to be addressed—teachers integrating appropriate technology into the lesson plans. This will lead to a more concise use of technology with the focus of the objectives set forth in our CTP.

Professional Development—teachers meet as teams to plan for technology use to meet the new or modified CTP. Incorporating technology is the goal for the CTP within learner centered activities provided by the teachers and staff. This process will continue throughout the year as teams collaborate and make modifications and/or changes needed.

Evaluation Planning for Action Plan

Evaluation:

1. AEIS—disaggregation of data by grade level teams

There should be a positive growth in scores as learner-centered activities are implemented with the integrated technological components. Meeting the goals of the CTP should also show in this data disaggregation as well.

2. PDAS observations(both formal and informal)

Visual determination of teachers’ integration of technology should be evident by the administration team. It should not only be integrated into the curriculum but also meeting the needs of students through differentiation of instruction.

3. Surveys

a. Survey of teachers by the administration team to determine the viability and personal use of technology in their classroom

b. Survey of teachers by the administration team to assess the overall validity and viability of the professional development provided

c. A continuous online forum for feedback by teachers to assess the quality of the professional development. This also would be the forum for feedback on technology, both positive and negative.

STaR Chart Power Point Presentation

View my STaR Chart power-point presentation by clicking HERE.

A Peek at the National Educational Technology Plan

I want to take a quick look at the "National Education Technology Plan" drafted by the Office of Educational Technology which is a part of the Department of Education. This plan was drafted in March of 2010 and is available for all to read at http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/NETP-2010-final-report.pdf. The goals of this plan as set forth by our present presidential administration are; (1) raise the proportion of college graduates from 39% to 60% and (2) close the achievement gap so that all students graduate from high school ready for college. The plan is comprised of five areas of concern; learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. They are based in the "model of 21st century learning." Their are "Grand Challenge Problems" that the Department of Education realizes need to be addressed.
The plan calls for reforms to education on many levels and is very progressive. As ambitious as the plan is I hope that it does not override the everyday life of education. Part of the problem I perceive will be the funding of these changes and where those funds will come from. How will we help those under-performing campuses meet the needs of there students and have those students college ready without funds? How do we get educators to buy into this way of educational life? How do we encourage and instill in those students the love of learning when they are not getting their basic needs met? Technology can be one of the keys to this needed reform to help produce the life-long learners we want and need in our world. It is a way of life that I live in daily and will keep on trying to help others buy into this way of life. Hopefully I can be a small part of the big plan.

Technology, How are we doing so far?

How are we doing according to the 2010 Progress Report on the Long-Range Plan for Technology,

2006-2020? I waded into this 152 page document not really knowing what to expect. There is quite a bit of information to take in, ponder on and reflect about here. What I have found is several things that I knew very little about until now. I had only heard small bits of information on the different grants like; the Vision 2020 Grant, The Target Tech in Texas (T3) Collaborative Grant, the Connections grant and the Professional Development for Schools, Teachers, Administrators and Regions (STAR) Grant. All of these make funds available to meet the needs of our technology issues in Texas. I also had not heard much about all the pilot programs like; the Technology Literacy Assessment Pilot, the Technology Immersion Pilots and the Online Tutoring Pilot. These programs help to meet the needs of students in meeting their needs and helping them to be successful using technology in their educational lives. It speaks to how all these parts fit into the four key areas: teaching and learning; educator preparation and development; leadership , administration, and instructional support; and infrastructure. The infrastructure was an area that I thought would be a tough one to fulfill but I was surprised to see the high percentage of broadband availability to households. I knew a little about the Computer Lending Pilot Program as my campus has been on the receiving end of refurbished computers for our students supplied by the state. The report seems to show that there is progress being made in all the areas and more advanced tech ratings as the days go by. So that leads to my next discussion of the National Educational Technology Plan.

What is Leadership to do in a 21st Century Technological World?

The School Technology and Readiness Chart, STaR Chart, is a great tool for a local campus to help understand where they are technologically. I have been looking at the area of Leadership, Administration and Instructional Support as it applied to our campus technology because I considered it to be a strong point for our campus. What I found was some very strong areas and some areas in need of improvement. Our campus ranks right along with the majority of campuses in this area where 55 % (4444 of 8087) of all reporting campuses are at the Advanced Tech level of progress. This level is described as having several apparent components. First, there is board approval of our campus technology plan and that our superintendent supports the plan. Our school board and central administration do a good job in support of our individual campuses. Secondly, we do meet the 1 technical support staff for every 500 computers in our district with 1640 computers and 4 members on our technical support staff. We also have a full-time district technology director. Not only that but it looks like this year our campus technology representatives will not have any classroom responsibilities but will be our local technology experts. This is a big breakthrough for each campus and they should be able to help us in several of our technology needs. Third, we do have a technology allotment, with some grants and local funding. This is one part of this area, budget, that we are rated early tech with a 1. This area is a tough one which I believe we should be looking for alternative ways to meet our technological needs. Some of our teachers have done so on an independent basis since we have no real community stakeholders to reach out to in this area. Our campus is located in a small rural community roughly 8 miles from our central office and no large businesses to reach out to. This is something we will need to delve into to help take up the shortfall we see in our local budget. The strongest part of this area of leadership is the leadership and vision realm. Our administrative staff does a great job in providing data, modeling how to use the data, and making time for us to disaggregate the data and collaborate over what the data points to. Well, enough of this for now and next on the agenda is a look at the progress report of the Long-Range Plan for Technology. I wonder how we have done so far.