Our final Technology Use Planning Presentation with notes. Fall 2011

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3. Starting with the premise that the district IT manager has researched technology platforms
or learning programs and the budget parameters have been set, the formation of a
technology use plan will require input from the following people. The district IT Manager,
who will help the team sift through available options. The curriculum coordinator, who will
envision the application across curriculums. And the IT coordinators from each school
within the district, who will eventually be involved in the distribution and implementation
of the technology plan within each campus.. In addition the planning team can be made up
of teachers with the following considerations: 1. The teachers are knowledgeable with
technology and have applied that knowledge in their lessons. 2. There is a fair spread of
teachers across the levels of K‐12 education, and 3. There is a representative for each core
subject that will apply this technology plan.
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4. 1. Create a Planning Team ‐ Assemble effective members who will collaborate and
review the school's current technology and plan for the school's future use of
technology.
2. Mission Statement ‐ The planning team creates a school wide mission statement
for the possible outcomes of implementing technology within the school.
3. Current Technology Data within the Institution ‐ Where is the school currently at
with technology? What technology is needed to meet the goals and objectives?
4. Goals and Objectives ‐ Create goals and objectives that the school plans to achieve
within a certain time period..
5. Implement Plan and Assess ‐ Deliver the technology use plan within the school,
implement the plan school‐wide, and assess the use of the technologies being
used.
6. Maintain Technology Use in the School ‐ Continual faculty/staff development and
technology maintenance.
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5. Technology is a driving force in education today. In order to allow our students to fully
participate and strive in today’s world, they need to develop skills to increase the use of
technology in their everyday lives. Among the skills necessary are keyboarding, information
retrieval, basic processing, critical thinking, and appropriate technology application skills.
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6. Once the team is formed, the members will need to establish a set of goals and objectives.
This step is necessary when choosing technology platforms and implementation
procedures. Also, the team can see what types of needs can be met through extended
service contracts.
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7. The goals should focus on how the team can implement a technology plan into the
curriculum and properly prepare the staff to either manipulate it to their teaching needs or
utilize it for student productivity and assessment. The school must consider technology
standards during this process.
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8. Once the curriculum goal is established, the team must consider how the staff will be
trained to use the technology plan. Adequate staff preparation should establish a time
frame for the pre‐training and post training, as teachers will need to assess themselves on
how they applied the technology plan.
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9. Most schools are not autonomous and they must abide by standards in education. Both
national and state standards are required to be applied to public education. In terms of a
developing a technology plan, these standards are the minimum requirements to apply,
while considering how the plan is contributing and competing with global, national, and
regional society. However, the team must consider the local community environment
when abiding by established standards or when creating new standards, because the local
community will benefit the most from the achievements of the students.
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10. Since technology has and will have an unreliable aspect to it, the team must identify some
important issues with maintenance and support. Maintenance is how you tend to
technology. As the team makes a technology plan, they can address this issue with the
servicing company. However, the team will need to identify the go‐to person from the
school or district, which will make sure the servicing company is contacted promptly.
Even with extensive training, there are too many variables when the technology is applied,
so the team will need to discuss how troubleshooting can be provided efficiently.
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11. An example of the technology plan goal is: In an effort to reach (a specific standard),
teachers of (a specific subject area) will receive staff development within the first month of
implementation with ongoing training and teacher evaluation for the next 5 months.
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12. When making a technology plan, the objectives should focus on student use and output.
This can be how students use technology to facilitate their own learning, how they
communicate with colleagues and school staff, how they are assessed, which projects they
complete, or even the available courses they can take with this technology plan.
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13. Here are some examples of objectives geared toward the students: Students will be able to
take (a specific course) entirely online. Students will be measured for the knowledge of (a
specific course) with the use of (a specific technology). Students will communicate with
teachers and classmates by using (a specific technology). Students will apply the use of (a
specific technology) to support their learning goals or project outcomes.
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14. As the technology plan is put into action, here is a list of areas that will need to be assessed
along the way. Staff Development: Is the staff given enough opportunity to learn, apply,
and assess the use of the technology plan? Equal Application: Are all the teachers within a
subject area doing an equal application of the technology plan? Distribution of Resources:
Is every teacher and student given equal access to the use of the technology plan?
Schedules: Are there contradicting times when more than one group is trying to access the
use of the technology plan? Support Staff: Is sufficient and efficient support available when
needed? And finally, you need to measure the various parts of the technology plan for
reliability: How reliable is the network? How reliable is the software? What functionality
issues have occurred?
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15. Training before technology is implemented
∙ An initial in‐service to provide training for the technology to be implemented should
be provided,
as well as periodic check points, to update skills.
Support while technology is being used
∙ Teachers in particular should have access to technology staff and subject‐area
coaches to help
them integrate the new technology into their curriculum.
Opportunities for additional/ ongoing training
∙ Teachers and staff should be given and feel free to seek out opportunities for
additional training,
such as conferences or webinars.
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16. Continual evaluation – are we keeping in mind goals we have set for ourselves.
If we only evaluate every year or two, we might miss some advance in technology that
could help us achieve our goals in a more timely fashion. We also might miss key
milestones – state testing or student evaluations of their experiences at the school.
Checkpoints could be done fairly simply – we could deploy a survey to students, staff and
faculty, or any combination thereof, and find out if they feel like the goals that we set
forth are being met. Using that feedback in addition to any concrete scores would
be useful.
In terms of research, it is possible that between our starting point and our first evaluation,
things will change. We will need to dig around and find out what – if anything –
changed.
It would be useful to coincide our evaluations with local, state and national
elections, or right after budget meetings. These are things that affect education
and knowing the outcomes would influence any tweaking we might do to the
technology usage plan.
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17. The timeline is subject to change and the needs of the school. We incorporated our steps
from our process into the timeline ‐ this made the most sense to us.
A couple of things to note are the following:
• The planning team can meet on a periodic basis, but after the first couple of
months they probably will not meet as frequently as they did in the initial stages of
the project. Some follow up meetings when the end of the school year nears
would also be useful.
• Faculty and staff development can also be on an ongoing basis, in addition to what
is already scheduled.
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