Week 4 Assignment

This is my technology action plan for my week 4 assignment.

Part 1: Development of an organization chart integrating technology

Teachers
Responsible for integrating technology into their lesson plans. Track use of laptops in mobile lab; teacher who has the lab signed out must ensure that all students are using their assigned computer and that computers are returned in the same state in which they were signed out. Also responsible for troubleshooting basic technology challenges in the classroom. Must fill out work orders on SchoolDude for any technology work that they cannot self-correct.

Campus Technologist
Provides professional development for teachers on integrating technology into their classrooms. Can co-teach a lesson on technology with enough notice. Manages our campus IT staff member. Also responsible for managing licensing of software. Ensures that all staff have the proper licenses. Coordinates all-campus updates of staff computers. Contracts out for webpage writing, including our detention management system.

Campus IT
Fulfills work-order requests for teachers who are having computer problems or need something new installed. Also monitors our CPU use to ensure that all computers continue to run smoothly.

Principal
Manages cost of technology. Plans budget. Selects relevant professional development for teachers.

Instructional Coach
Monitors teacher lesson plans and completes teacher observations to ascertain the level of tech integration across campus.

Librarian
Ensures school is abiding by copyright laws. Manages our subscriptions to online resources including Brainpop, EBSCO, Discovery Learning and other databases and research tools.

District IT director
Approves campus budget requests. Advises campus technologist (ours is managed by the principal) in decision making.

Part 2: Professional Development Planning
Using the campus and district improvement plans, and any suggested technology improvements, develop professional development activities that include the following:

• Reference analysis and lessons learned about the technology needs from the Week 3 report;
• Addresses professional development designed to improve the gathering, analysis and use of data from a variety of sources;
• Includes professional development to improve decision making in the integration of technology with instructional and organizational leadership.

Based on the analysis of the STaR chart data and both low and high inference data from teachers, students and staff, IDEA’s greatest area for growth is ensuring that teachers are able to seamlessly integrate technology into their regular lesson plans. We also need to ensure that our students are leaving the K-8 technology program with a core set of basic skills so that when they reach high school, students are able to use technology to learn rather than spending their time using to learn technology.
First and foremost, the principal, grade level chairs, content chairs and instructional coaches should work together to create a list of “technology masters,” teachers who are regularly integrating technology into their lessons and have found that it positively impacts student achievement. These teachers should be identified as models for the rest of our campus. Then, principals should implement an “observation challenge” where teachers are challenged to observe as many of the “technology masters” as they can during a two or three week period. For “credit” teachers could turn in an observation form to their manager. Perhaps at the end of the “observation challenge” there could be a small, motivational prize. This way, teachers would have the motivation to observe those who are moving forward in their technology integration.
Secondly, we should have a “new things in new ways” training where teachers are taught how to create a blog or wiki, to use the Quizzdom system and/or to use the wireless graphing calculator tools. Teachers could self-select so that the professional development would be differentiated. Many teachers don’t need the graphing calculator system or already know how to create a blog, so having a variety of options would ensure quality participation.
Finally, we need to expand the impact of our library. Right now, many teachers do not use the online resources that we have available because they simply do not know how. Kids search Google instead of NetTrekker because that’s how their teachers do it. If we modeled how to use these online resources (like databases and online encyclopedias), students would be able to use them more effectively. We need to start by allowing our librarian to put on a staff training where we all practice using these resources so that teachers feel more confident in sharing them with their students. This is critical as our students struggle with research skills. If teachers had a better command of the library research databases, we could pass those skills along to our students.

Part 3: Evaluation Planning for Action Plan
Evaluation of the technology action plan needs to start with teachers. First, what changes are principals and instructional coaches seeing in the planning phases? When they review teachers’ lesson plans, what are they finding? They should also monitor the sign-out of technology more closely. Who is signing out the mobile labs and quizzdom system? Who is signing up to bring their classes to the library for database training with the librarian? Administrators should monitor these areas to ensure that teachers are making an attempt to integrate technology. This will allow for a quantitative analysis of technology implementation across campus.
This low-inference, quantitative data is not sufficient. In their observations and debriefs, instructional coaches should be looking for and evaluating the quality of technology integration on the campuses. The observations will provide for more subjective data on how comfortable teachers seem with technology. In the corresponding debriefs, coaches should be asking guiding questions around the teachers’ use of technology to ascertain what is holding them back and what tools they need to continue making progress in the area of integrating technology.
The librarian would assess her component by issuing a survey (perhaps through SurveyMonkey—response rates are high when we use this tool) about the number of times teachers have used some of the different data tools. She could also provide low inference data on the number of hits each of those websites have from our IP address.