Week 5: Reflection

Looking back over this course, I have realized the outcome I had for this course as a leader was not what the course was. I was not thinking about the course being all about technology. I quickly realized that I needed to start thinking as a campus technology leader. After I started to think about instruction as a technology leader, the outcomes I had for this course became clearer. From this course I wanted to learn how to lead through the use of technology. I also wanted to gain knowledge in the STaR chart and how it applies specifically to my campus, as well as what I could do to help change the use of technology and the growth of it on the campus. In participating in this course through the readings, discussion, and assignments, I was able to acquire knowledge I will need to help lead the campus in the use of technology. I have learned various ways students and educators are using technology to provide valuable learning opportunities, help provide 24/7 professional development as well as support to students. I have also learned that there are many valuable tools out there to assess the technology needs of the campus. The STaR chart is just one of the ways we assess technology, and is something schools all across the state and nation complete. The report is sent to the department of education to help the federal government assess the needs of the nation. The Star chart also helps determine funding the schools get for use with technology. I didn’t know before the course, that the principal gets a report each year of the chart results for the campus and should use those to adjust professional development goals, and make instructional changes to the CIP.


I feel pretty confident in achieving the outcomes I had for myself in this course. Everything I was learning about was relevant to my current assignment. After reading all of the articles and looking at the technology application TEKS, and the District plan for technology I have realized that technology is not being used as much as it should be. I have found that as the Campus technology liaison and head of the vertical team, I need to incorporate technology more into the classroom and model for other teachers in the school more. I have started trying to incorporate technology more throughout the lessons the last couple of weeks because I have realized the need for it.

Course assignments for the most part helped me gain a greater understanding of my role as the technology facilitator on campus. The assignments at times were frustrating and I felt as if I would never complete them because they were very involved and mandated a thorough understanding of the readings and information that was required to be gathered and synthesized. I managed to successfully complete each assignment on time and still apply the learning at work. The only thing that seemed to be a hinderance at times, was time itself. With the demands of work , holidays, family, and the assignments, at times I was very overwhelmed. Even though I was overwhelmed I was still able to follow through and get the assignments completed.

These obstacles faced are just a test, when looking back, to what it will be like at times as a leader on campus, whether as a facilitator, or administrator. I have learned that when times get stressful and sometimes seem like nothing is going right, I keep pushing through and get the job done. I have learned that I can handle stress and still get the job done. I have also learned that what I know about technology is really just a drop in the bucket to what I need to know. I need to look more at resources available and how they are being used. Technology is a big part of the society we live in and we must bring it into the classroom to do that many stakeholders have to be involved in order for this endeavor to successfully be undertaken.

One way that teachers are bringing this into the classroomis by creating blogs. Blogs are a part of the 21st century and allow teachers and students to communicate outside of the traditional classroom. Blogs are a way to incorporate many technology applications. Blogs allow students from across the school, district, state, country, and world to communicate with each other. Blogs allow students to participate in book clubs, where they respond to questions about the book. There are many other ws they can be used as well. Teachers can post projects the students have completed to communicate with parents and other stakeholders. Schools can use a blog to help parents stay informed about events and issues at the school. Since parents can comment, questions can be asked on a post to solicit parent and community feedback.

Of course with any tool used on the internet, blogs have concerns associated with them. If they are not set to private, anyone can find them and make comment to assignments or student work. Blogs also only allow for one person to post. If students want to add anything, they have to make a comment to the posting. Blogs are accessable over the internet so we have to teach students how to safely use the internet, and to comment appropriately. Students need to know that cyber-bullying is not acceptable and must be reported.

This course has been challenging but yet rewarding with all of the applicable information used. I look forward to being able to use this information as a leader on campus to help successfully integrate technology with the content-area curriculum.

Action Plan week4

Action Plan Part 1: Stakeholder Responsibilities


Stakeholder Job Description

District Curriculum Department Coordinators:District Coordinators will work together to help integrate technology with content areas. Scope and sequences will reflect collaboration among content area departments and the technology department through projects to help enrich student learning and engage them in learner-centered learning.

Teachers: Teachers will plan together to create technology-rich lessons and assignments to help learning in the classroom move from teacher-centered to learner-centered.

Technology Vertical Team: One teacher per grade level will participate in the campus technology vertical team. This team will assist teachers with the use of technology in the classroom as well as make recommendations to the SBDM committee about goals related to technology.

One Campus Teacher and Librarian: These two the teachers will serve a campus Technology Liaisons to meet with district personnel and bring information back to the campus. Both of these individuals are also the people to answer questions about technology on campus.

Librarian: The librarian will implement technology standards through the library rotation. The library has a computer lab as part of it, and the librarian will engage students with projects the students can work on while on the computer and also working on library skills.

District Instructional Technology Specialist: District Instructional Technology Support will provide staff development as well as technical support for teachers. They will also model lessons in classrooms for teachers, especially new teachers reluctant to use technology.

SBDM Committee: The committee will be responsible for implementing technology integration in the content areas into campus goals.

Principal: The principal will oversee and make sure the plan is implemented and evaluated for effectiveness. The principal will conduct ongoing evaluations throughout the year to ensure technology on the campus is being used to its maximum potential. He/she will also be responsible for making sure everyone knows the role they will play in bringing the campus up to date with district technology goals, as well as making sure the budget allows for bringing the campus up to date with technology needs.

Action Plan Part 2: Professional Development

Professional Development and Description and reasoning

Mentoring
Mentoring should take place between the newer technology savvy teachers and the veteran teachers who are very much digital immigrants and reluctant to use technology in the classroom. This partnership among teachers will help teachers collaborate to enhance the student use of technology in the classroom. It will also model the collaboration we want our students using in class. We mentor our struggling students so we should carry the same thing over to our teachers who need help with bringing technology into the classroom.

Vertical Teaming
Vertical teaming would take place between each campus vertical team and the technology vertical team. Together they will collaborate to integrate technology into the content areas. This needs to take place not only so that teachers have a chance to collaborate with each other, but also because the district technology plan indicates that this integration should take place from the 2008-2010 school year, which means that it should be taking place now. Also it is to be “seamlessly integrated into all content areas (CISD Technology Plan), by the 2011-2012 school year.





WOW! Cart Boot Camp
As part of the district’s technology plan, they want to have one WOW! cart for every 250 students on a campus. At our campus as mentioned in the week 3 report, we have three carts and have about 560 students. We have the number of carts needed at a minimum, but we need to train more teachers to become Master Teachers of the WOW! cart. When the district first started using these carts 2 years ago, they held boot camps in order to provide an intense training on using the cart and web 2.0 tools out there for the students to use to learn with. In order for teachers to become more acquainted with the tools and to help with moving towards student-centered learning. WOW! boot camps could be offered at the district level and mater teachers already on the campus could hold trainings. These trainings would be monitored for effectiveness by evidence in teacher’s lesson plans and student projects.





24/7 Professional Development
 Campus professional development should be implemented online though Moodle to provide trainings for teachers that will be available 24/7. Teachers will be able to access these professional development sessions from anywhere at any time. This will allow teachers to attend professional development that meets their needs, as well as have a variety of offerings available. Of course, some of the trainings will be mandatory , but for the most part the professional development will differentiated to meet the wide variety of needs on campus.


Rubric Creation
 Teachers will participate in professional development from district instructional support staff to develop rubrics to evaluate student-learning online, based upon projects created. This is a critical component since student learning is going to be seamlessly integrated with technology and teachers will need to be able to grade their learning.





Action Plan Part 3:

In order to evaluate the action plan that is to be put into place and the professional development that will be taking place in order to help guide our students in the use of technology throughout content areas, several evaluation places need to be put in place. One of these is the Campus Improvement Plan. In order to ensure the integration of technology is taking place on campus, the CIP must be looked at over the course of the year to check to see if the goals regarding technology are being met. They must also check to make sure they are aligned with the district improvement plan’s goal regarding technology integration. If not, the SBDM committee will need to meet and make adjustments to ensure that they will be met.

The STaR chart is also a tool of evaluation that will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the action plan. Professional development has been a weak area on the survey. The results will be useful in determining if the professional development provided throughout the year has been effective. This should be one of several guiding factors that the campus leaders should use to make decisions about this area of need.

Eduphoria is a tool that will be used as well to evaluate. Teachers will be able to use this online program to access student information. This will help teachers make more informed decisions regarding curriculum planning, RTI, as well identifying students at-risk. If teachers are using this data, the school should be able to see an improvement in the school climate as well as the needs of the students being met. Student learning and achievement should be increased. Lesson plans are also going to be on Eduphoria which will allow easy access to evaluate whether technology is being integrated throughout the day and week in all content areas. Along with lesson plans on Eduphoria, administrators complete PDAS evaluations on the program which provides feedback as to whether or not there is evidence of technology incorporated into the lessons. Administrators can pull this information to see in general what is taking place in the classrooms and then adjust professional development accordingly.

Finally, feedback from staff development is a key component to understanding the effectiveness of what is taking place, and to the extent on how it is implemented in the classroom. Feedback from staff development should take place right after the sessions, as well as a few weeks afterward to see how teachers are using it within the classroom. The principal should use these evaluations to make informed decisions about what is the most beneficial staff development for the campus.

Web Conference Experience

Saturday I participated in the webconference hosted by Dr. Abernathy. The conference was another way for us to communicate with each other and with others in different sections, as well as with Dr. Abernathy. The conference took a while to get set up and the audio faded in and out. I participated through the chat function, since I do not have a webcam or a microphone.  There were only a handful of us participating which made it easier to keep up with the conversation.  Questions were clarified by both Dr. Abernathy and students. I would say that this experience was one of a typical web chat I have participated in before.

Texas S Ta R Chart: What Is It and Where Does Our Campus Fit?

This powerpoint is a summary of the Texas STar Chart and also my campus's results for the previous three years. It also contains reccomendations on how to use the information to improve technology on the campus.

Texas S Ta R Chart

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Week 2, Using a Blog--STaR Chart Area

     Infrastructure for Technology is on Key Area of the STar Chart survey that Campuses and Teachers take across the state annually. Infrastructure deals with the technology and support that is in the school and classrooms. Specifically the areas addresssed are the numbers of students per computers, the availability of internet access as it deals with connections and speed of the connections, the use of other technology in the classrooms, technical support available, Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN) access, and the avialabilty of distance learning.  All of the six sub-areas mentioned are critical to the other three areas surveyed on the STaR Chart.  Looking at this area is critical so that legislators as well as school boards can provide funding to support this.
     Looking at this area across national, state, and local levels, progress has been made, but at some levels it has been very slow.  At the federal level legislators are beginning to realize the need to provide funding for more computers and technology in the classrooms. However not every school across the nation has realized this need.  Educators and Legislators are beginning to see the need for increasing this area to help improve our society move into the 21st century.  At the state level their has been more planning to help increase the effectiveness of the infrastructure. The state has put into place the Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020. The state has also been working with the federal government to help improve and make way for an infrastructure that contains the necessary tools and softare for students to be a successful part of the 21st century. However, one roadblock is having enough funding to keep the infrastructure in place and to have all districts in equillibrium with each other.   At the district level, relating to my campus, there is not much progress being made.  For the previous three years the sub-area scores have stayed the same, neither decreasing or increasing.  This is an area that needs to be improved due to the lack of progress.
     Along with progress in this area at the local, state, and federal levels, there are trends that can be found. With regards to the state and federal levels, both are working together to improve those basic tools that students need be successful at using technology in the classroom.  On the other hand, another trend is that districts and campuses all across the nation do not have amount of technology tools that other campuses have.  So the trend is that campuses are still recieving equality with regards to the technology infrastructure. On the state level another trend is that classrooms have less than 4 students per computer , and students in at least three-fourths of the classrooms have direct access to the internet. On the local level, looking at my campus, The trend is that there are between five and nine students per computer in each classroom, which is a lot of students throughout the day who might never get to use the computer. Another trend is there is only one technical support personnel per 501-750 computers.  This equates to one technical support person on campus, which is usually a teacher.
     Since this is a critical component I feel that on the local level more support needs to be given.  For one, There should be more technical support staff at each campus.  This also needs to be a teacher who has more technology experience than just a classroom teacher who deals with technology issues on his/her off time. Distance learnig needs to be improved as well.  Not only for the teachers, but for the students as well.  Having teachers and students participating in learning online will not only help increase teacher knowledge, but also help students learn to collaborate and interact with each other.

Pre-K Technology Standards

     The Texas Pre-K guidelines, lay the foundation for all other curriculum standards. These standards are broken into five different areas, Social and emotional development, language and communication, emergent literacy: reading, emergent literacy: writing and mathematics. Social and emotional development deals with giving the students the  skills needed to help them control themselves and to make them more comfortable in the class setting.  The language and communication setting deals with having students learn to communicate appropriately. Their language skills such as speech are scaffolded to build upon each other. Emergent literacy: reading allows for students to become comfortable with concepts of print.  Students are able to see and hear teachers reading to them and modeling good reading.  They also start to learn about phonological awareness.  Emergent Literacy: Writing deals with getting them to start writing and getting them used to being comfortable with what they are writing.  Students are increasingly more comfortable with what they are writing and the letters they are forming and are constantly building upon these.  The last domain is Mathematics. Here students are introduced to the very basic of math skills. Students are able to work math activities  that are integrated into the curriculum.
     The Pre-K TEKS lay a foundation or the K-12 teachers to work on the curriculum before them and allow the students to be successful.  In Pre-K, students are given the opportunity to become comfortable in the skills they will soon be working on.  Giving the students this opportunity will help them when they start using technology.
     A spiraling or scaffolding curriculum is a curriculum that continually builds upon itself.  In the case of the Technology Application Standards, students start with a basic understanding in the lower grades and continually build upon those skill as they progress each year.  For example, In kindergarten though second grade, students in the information acquisition strand are expected to know how to acquire information using a variety of sources including audio, text, video and graphics (TEK 5a).  When looking at this same strand in grades 3 through 5, the same skills are expected.  Looking at grades 6 through 8, students are expected to build upon these skills previously expected for mastery and they are now given more specific audio sources and graphic media to use (TEK 5 a and b).  They are expected to know if they should use a bit map file or a jpeg file. They are also expected to use and access remote storage devices. Finally, in grades 9 through 12, students are building even more upon these previous skills.  They are now expected to use the same skills used to acquire information and this time apply it to programming projects (TEK 5b). In this curriculum the students are constantly building upon given expectations and given multiple opportunities to master them.

Week 1, Part 3: Key Ideas of the Long-range Plan for Technology

Looking at the Long-Range Plan for Technology, I have relized what the state's plan for improving technology in the school system is. Numerous pieces of data sources have been examined to help understand the growing demands and the impact of technology in the classroom.  Leaders are realizing that education is no longer something that works as a "one size fits all" way to teach students. Students are constantly changing and they way they learn is different for every child.  Bringing technology into the classroom is a way to differentiate the curriculum, which also helps met the demands of No Child Left Behind. As an aspiring administrator I have come to realize the impact I am going to have on my staff and students if I am able to lead them with the changing technology we are faced with everyday. As teachers graduate from college, they are going to be coming out more technology literate than previous teachers, which creates the need to provide current teachers with the training needed to keep up with the new teachers. As an instructional leader I have to budget for technology resources on my campus as well as  communicate with the staff what is expected of them. I have to assess the needs of teachers for staff development and bring in appropriate trainers to help. I also will need to allow for planning time so that teachers can discuss how to integrate it throughout the curricuum so that students are able to learn and collaborate with each other in a more meaningful and engaging way.  I will also need to use the technology myself that I want the staff to use, even if it means going into the classroom and modeling a lesson with the students using technology in a content area. 

Technology Inventories- week 1 part 2

     In looking at my strengths and weaknesses in technology, especially using technology in the educational setting, I took three assessments.  The first of these assessments was the Technology Applications Inventory. In this inventory,  four domains were looked at. These four domains were foundations, information acquisition, solving problems, and communication.  This inventory looked at how I use technology and how well I understand technology applications and terminology.  The inventory also looked at how I integrate these skills into the classroom trough the major content areas. Out of the four domains addressed with this inventory,  the strongest area for me is communication. I agree with this since I use the internet, as well as other technology applications to communicate with others.  Communication is necessary and so I have to be knowledgeable in this area to be able to do my job.  The weakest area for me is solving problems.  For the most part I try to solve as many problems with technology issues as I can. However, there are those times when I have trouble understanding what the problem is or do not know how to fix it. This is definitely an area I need to work on more.
     The second assessment I took to help analyze my knowledge of technology and the skills involved was the SETDA survey in the role of the teacher.In this survey I was asked questions about using technology at my school and in my classroom.  A few of the questions also dealt with technology use out of the classroom.  In reviewing the survey, I have realized that one area I need to work on is the ways in which my students use technology.  I need to work on having them collaborate with each other in order to help them with not only technology skills, but also with communication skills.  Collaboration is important to any area, and can help students improve. 
     The third assessment is The Rubric for Administrative Technology.  In this assessment, information use with technology is looked at through an administrator's eyes.  Not only does it look at how the administrator uses technology for information regarding students, and budgets, but it addresses how the administrators feels his or her staff uses the technology. I agree with this assessment since it relies on the administrator taking a step back and looking at themselves and their staff.  This assessment could be very powerful in trying to determine areas of need.
     In looking at all three of these together communicating with others using technology is definitely one of my strengths.  On the otherhand, using technology across the content areas, as well as giving students more opportunities throughout the school day to use technology is a weakness.  I want to address these areas as well as being able to fix issues with technology and improve them.  In doing so I will be a more effective teacher and leader. These three assessments also are valuable tools to help guide technolgy improvement on campuses.  All of these surveys seem to address multiple areas on a campus where technology would bem used and really make the participants to a look at how they are using the technology.