Action Plan For Technology.

In order to be truly effective the technology plan must address the areas of weakness that were found in the previous years STaR charts as well as address the needs found from polling teachers on the areas that they feel they need more training in. Since our biggest area is teacher preparedness we need to focus on training our teachers so that they know how to use the technology they have been given.

Powerpoint is an effective way to capture student’s attention as it can be infused with graphics, moving images, movie clips and sounds. One of the best ways to create an interactive class quiz is to use the Jeopardy version of powerpoint as this stimulates the classroom more than just having the questions posted on the board.

While my campus is up to date on the ratio of computers to students, many of the other campuses are not up to date and have very poor ratios. On the other hand my campus does not have the other technology that the other schools have, like smart boards or projectors. Meetings will need to be held to seek alternative sources of funding so that we can get those items as they are not addressed in the current technology plan. We might look at writing some grants to gain more money for technology or even approaching businesses for donations if the district approves.

The wireless network needs to be improved somewhat because it seems to get overloaded quickly an often kicks laptops off. Because of the nature of my campus and the fact that the students are in cubicles it has become impractical to have a desktop for each student as the desktops do not fit into the current cubicles. We therefore need to meet with the technology department to get some more wireless routers set up and add more capacity to the existing technology so that more laptops can have a reliable connection to the network.

It will be very important to have many technology related sessions during our staff development time because many teachers simply are not aware of the technology available to them or even how to use it in their classrooms. Instead of simply being left to their own devices on what training to attend we need a more proactive approach.

I suggest that teachers be given an ongoing poll to find out their levels of competency and areas of weakness. Then training that is customized to those levels can be offered for various groups. Staff will be placed into the mandatory training sessions according to the information they provided on the form and their classes will be covered during the times they need to attend if it is during the day.

In order to make the training seem even more enticing, some form of reward can be offered for an incentive. Instead of a cash incentive, staff can be awarded hours or points for attending the sessions and those points can be redeemed for a piece of equipment like a digital camera or a smartboard or something that the teacher does not currently have in his or her classroom.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the training that has been received staff will need to be able to demonstrate their increased usage of the technology learned. Every level will contain an exit test that showcases all the knowledge that should have been gained by taking the course and staff will need to attain a passing grade on every item to show competence.