Week 1, Post 1, STaR Chart: Infrastructure

The Texas Long Range Plan for Technology was developed to help school districts, administrators and teachers understand what areas they should be proficient in utilizing, offering to students for their development, and how they should be using their funding to increase student learning to the highest level.

    The area of the Long Range Plan that I am interested in is the infrastructure for technology. The infrastructure for technology is the backbone of the schools support for students' and teachers' technological needs. In my opinion, this is the most important area because without a strong foundation, advanced technology cannot be effectively implemented. With schools becoming more and more technology focused, the strong infrastructure becomes even more of a focus. The three areas of focus within the infrastructure category include: internet access, internet connectivity speed and technical support.

    At my campus, over the last three years the first two areas, internet access and connectivity speed have improved from the lower "developing" category to "advanced," while technical support has faltered between "developing" and the lowest level "early." As a state, 57% of Texas schools rank as "advanced" in the area of infrastructure. This is great news for Texas overall, and it shows that my district, ranking "developing" overall, has fallen behind and needs to make efforts for improvement. This trend shows that, as a whole, infrastructure is one of the most improved upon areas in the last few years, both in my district and state-wide. The improvement will hopefully improve until the majority of schools reach the highest "target" level of technology achievement.

    My recommendations for improving infrastructure at the national, state and local levels, involves stronger employment opportunities for technology support and stronger campus-wide accessibility. My campus has made strides this year in internet access, by making the entire school wireless internet compatible. However, our technical support still lacks strongly. We have one person who is dedicated to the technology of two very large 5A campuses. Needless to say, technology requests can be slow to completion. Another answer to this issue would be offering teachers, especially those interested in technology, professional development to teach them how to become operators and managers on campus. As they become trained and help on technology tasks on campus they could be rewarded professional development credit hours or salary stipends. This usage could eliminate the need for adding a high-paying full-time position.

    The Long Range Plan for improvement in Texas is making our schools more aware of the needs of campuses and students, and will hopefully help make our students more technologically ready for our ever-changing world.

STaR Chart Presentation

See more presentations by k_shae_m | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

Week 1, Blog 3, Pre K TEKS and Spiraling Curriculum

One of my main educational philosophies is that students have to have a strong foundation rooted in education in order to succeed throughout the educational journey. The TEKS for Pre K students are designed to create a foundation for each student to build upon in order to make them successful. Teachers focus on making students socially aware and responsible through interactions and skill building. They also focus on speech and communication. Basic levels of English, reading and mathematics are also introduced. One skill that is not specifically mentioned as a domain, but is a part of each strand, is the development of daily routines. This is probably one of the most important things that is taught in the early years of a child's education. Establishing what the expectations are for each day prepare students for middle school, high school, and their future career fields. I have no elementary education experience and found the Pre K TEKS to be very interesting!

A spiralled curriculum is one based learning basic ideas numerous times and at varying degrees of difficulties. The philosophical idea behind a spiralled curriculum is that if some students do not grasp the information the first time around, hopefully they will understand it the second or third time. However, the students who did grasp it the first time are spiralling upward and moving their skill on to a higher level. The technology TEKS are designed to be a spiralled curriculum because they can use the same skills multiple times in higher level processes. For example, the foundations section of the technology TEKS (#2) focuses on students learning how to input information into the computer using various devices. TEKS #5 under the information acquisition strand, calls on students to acquire information using proper search methods on search engines within the school database and on the Internet. Another TEKS (#8) in the problem solving strand, is on a higher level of the spiral, and allows students to work outside of the school in online organizations to acquire information. This calls upon their skills from TEKS #2 and TEKS #5 to be used again. Without these original TEKS on the spiral plan this new TEKS assignment would not be possible. I like the idea of spiraling curriculum because it allows for diverse students, which are abundant in every classroom setting.

Week 1, Post 2, Long Range Plan

The Long-Range Plan for technology in Texas is a great guide for administrators and teachers. It details all aspects of technology in schools and how it can best be developed, managed and assessed. As an administrator, this plan can be used to gauge how your school is currently using technology and the steps it needs to take to improve in various areas and become more equitable. I, as a current teacher, also find this useful to help understand the state's goals for technology in my classroom and on my campus. It would be very beneficial for administrators to share this information with teachers to encourage growth in the area. I feel that one of the best ways to encourage improvement in the area of technology would be to assess the "defining the need for change" section of the plan. I also like the use of surveys in the "teachers voice" sections. This information was useful to me, and would be great for administrators to share with stakeholders. It provides concrete data for why our schools need to be using technology to prepare our students for the future.

Week 1, Blog 1, Technology Assessments

My Application and Evaluation of the Technology Assessments

According to the Technology Applications Inventory, I seem to be stronger in the areas of problem solving and communication than in foundations and information acquisition. This assessment surprised me greatly. If I had been asked which of the four my strong areas were, I would have chosen the two areas that I ranked lowest on. I am glad that I took the survey to show me not only the areas that need improving, but particularly the things that I do not understand, such as search strategies, storage systems and technology laws.

For the second assignment I took the SETDA Teacher survey, because my current position is as a teacher. This survey asked me about the technology that is available to me at my school, and how often and comfortable I feel with the equipment. My school has some technology equipment beyond the traditional classroom equipment. This includes smart boards and electronic handheld white boards. I feel comfortable with traditional technology in the classroom and use it daily, however, the more advanced technology that my school has provided has not been put to use to the highest degree because many of us, myself included, do not feel comfortable using it. While we could have more technology available at my school, I think the main area that we lack in is professional development to teach teachers how to utilize the instruments that are already available to us.

Our world, especially in the education field, is becoming more and more technologically advanced and more things require an accurate knowledge of how to use technology effectively and efficiently. As a teacher, advancements in technology are important as an educational tool, and for communication with stakeholders. I use technology in my classroom every day, with the use of PowerPoint notes and projectors to our classroom website that updates my students and their parents on important classroom announcements and due dates. As an administrator it is vitally important to understand and be the campus leader on implementing the use of technology effectively. Communication through technology is the most important aspect of an administrator to understand and utilize. This includes communication with all stakeholders, through email, websites, and more. I am a younger teacher, and I grew up with the ever-changing technology-based society, so I plan to keep learning and using technology in my profession as much as possible.