My Reflection

The entire experience has proven to be an excellent advancement in my career as an educator. Over the past couple of years I realized that technology played an important t role at my school and how much the students were extremely interested in technology.Children born today will never know a day without technology and what it offers. It is so important that educators are knowledgeable about educational technology and how it can heighten students’ learning. Being Peer Facilitator I had to figure out ways to integrate and incorporate technology into teacher’s classroom to keep current with the new age teaching concepts and to foster new ways to make learning exciting and interesting.  Educational Technology is something that is useful and exciting to me as a teacher because you can create, demonstrate, and have the children apply and enhance their knowledge through various educational technological means. The possibilities are fun, educational, and endless.  It is really fascinating to me just how much is out there that can assist in educational purposes.

Through Fundamentals of Educational Technology course I have learned to value and understand that we must have a vested interest in technology to educate our students properly. This course has taught me skills and has given me tools that I can use to make my teaching more effective and meaningful. Creating a Wiki website and a Blog has made me think of new ways to communicate with our students and parents. Additionally researching and developing the Internship Plan with the eight ISTE Technology Facilitator Standards, the 33 Performance Indicators and the 78 Performance Tasks has caused me to reevaluate how we use technology on our campus and how I can be a technology leader that promotes and highlights innovative ways to prepare our students for the future. I have learned many new ways of making my information a lot more assessable for my students with the use of the Internet. I have new ideas that will enable myself to have a fully functional website that is comprehensible for my students to learn form. I plan to have videos, Blogs, tests, assignments, great links, and many different applications to enhance my students’ learning. Plus, I feel fortunate to be apart of a dynamic and encouraging cohort that has given to me constructive feedback and support on my assignments and where I have learned about their important projects and concerns at their own schools.

District Technology Plan

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Blog Posting #3 – National Educational Technology Plan

The goals for National Educational Technology Plan are learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. With Goal 1 emphasizing Learning, they believe all learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and outside of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society. You should look at the objectives for all content areas that reflect by revise, create, and adopt new standards in order to improve learning for technology. In order to make this effective you must develop and adopt learning resources that use technology and exploit the flexibility and power of technology to reach all learners anytime and anywhere. In addition using advances in the learning sciences and technology to enhance STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning. Plus evaluate new methodologies with the potential to enable all learners to excel in STEM.


Goal 2, focuses on Assessment that the education system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement.

Goal 3, Teaching, that educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners. When teaching who should design, develop technology-based content, resources, and online learning communities. Make sure to provide staff developments with preparation and professional learning experiences powered by technology that close the gap between students’ and educators’ knowledge. Overall to improve learning, assessment, and instructional practices while utilizing technology.

Goal 4, Infrastructure, they believe that all will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.

Goal 5, Productivity, our education system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff.

Blog Posting #2 – District Technology Plan

Goals and realistic strategy for using telecommunications and information technology

GOAL 1: Student performance will improve annually to meet the criteria for the district to reach 90%
GOAL 2: Socio-economic status, ethnicity, and gender participation and performances differences among students will be eliminated while the participation and performance of all increases.
GOAL 3: The marketability of Pasadena Independent School district students will improve annually to ensure success in the academic and business world.
GOAL 4: Students will annually demonstrate improved responsibility, citizenship, and value for human worth and dignity.
GOAL 5: The professional development program will provide ongoing, sustained professional development for all teachers, principals, administrators, and school library media personnel and ensure that staff members know how to use technology to improve education services.
GOAL 6: Quality, real time information and data will be used in management, intervention, evaluation and assessment of all programs to increase performance, increase effective and efficient operations and to support the strategies of the district.
GOAL 7: Technology Infrastructure: Required technology service will be implemented and maintained to support the instructional and administrative technology needs of the district.

A professional development strategy
Technology staff development has been a primary focus in order to integrate technology into the curriculum and instruction. A District Technology Course Catalog outlines workshops available on the district web site. The district provides face-to-face, computer-based, or web based instruction. Three categories of workshops have been designed to meet the needs of teachers and administrators:

*Awareness - skills needed for staff to manage their needs, such as Basic Operations of Computers, Email, Use of the Internet, Internet Searches, and Technology Planning, Policies, and Procedures.

*Application - skills needed for the staff to acquire the productivity skills they would need for word processing, spreadsheets, databases, thinking maps, and web design.

*Integration - skills needed to provide teachers with resources and modeling on how to infuse the technology and the Internet into the curriculum and instruction.

Teachers are expected to complete the Awareness level courses within the first year they receive a computer. In the second year, they are required to begin the integration process. Since staff development was a large part of all the grants we have received, many of the teachers have completed the above requirements. Workshops are provided via the six district Instructional Specialists, outside resources, or one of the fifty-eight campus technology liaisons. The campus technology liaison is a certified teacher or librarian, who contracts to perform eighty hours of campus technology staff development outside the regularly scheduled workday. The technology liaison position was designed to have campus-level assistance with software and pedagogy. They are not assigned any technical duty, as the district has its own Network and Technical support team. The district Instructional Technology Specialists are responsible for training and working with the campus technology liaisons. The Instructional Technology Specialists work within one high school strand (the high school and all intermediate and elementary schools that feed to that high school). This model of train-the-trainer has proven highly effective in the number of workshops provided and in cost. In 2008-2009, thirty-three technology liaisons and the Instructional Technology Department became Texas Teacher Technology Certified through the Region XI ESC program. For the 2009-2010 school year, the Instructional Technology Department developed its own Pasadena Technology Competency program to demonstrate educator technology proficiency.


An assessment of telecommunication services, hardware, software, and other services needed
From this data and other assessments such as the campus and teacher STaR charts, the following needs were identified:
-Campus Technology Assessment - Needs
District Equipment Inventory - Develop Ongoing refresh plan past bond and add network electronics, servers and communication components.
-Campus Software Inventory - Develop a base level Instructional Load set that is available on all instructional workstations. Develop an assessment and approval process for additional software for workstations.
-Campus Technology Comparison - Large gap between campus technology capabilities.
-Library Technology Assessment - Address the design and define the strategy for student access to technology in the library for research, core curriculum and collaboration. Plan for the expansion and update of the LMS to support 21st century library needs to manage digital resources.
-Three Year STaR chart Longitudinal Assessment - Determine the target level in each focus area of the STaR that the district identifies as the target within the next three years and develop strategies to support those performance objectives.
-Principal Surveys - Need for more instructional support.

District Technology Assessment - Needs
-Develop a strategy to implement information management systems in curriculum, instruction, assessment and PD to support efficient and effective operations and to provide information for data driven decision making.
-Evaluated Technology Plan alignment and integration into the District and Campus Improvement Plans – Increase the alignment of technology to support key district goals and objectives. Work with the district and campus to evaluate and integrate technology as a key strategy to support their objectives.
-Peer to Peer Assessment of Technology and Systems to comparable districts. - Further evaluate the need for increased instructional technology support.
- Develop strategy for student access/assessment and determine mobile computing role in that strategy and plan accordingly. Increase bandwidth to support more functionality for student computing.
-Infrastructure Assessment - No Current Need
-LAN/WAN Assessment - Standardize technology capability at all campuses to allow for equal access to services.
-Internet Access - Increase Internet bandwidth.
-Software Portfolio - Develop a strategy to standardize software.

Technology budgets reported in plan by category
Teaching and Learning Budget $38,043,592.00
Educator Preparation and Development Budget $ 4,844,334.00
Leadership, Administration and Support Budget $ 3,359,380.00
Infrastructure for Technology Budget $27,560,974.00
Total Technology Expenditures $73,808,280.00

Ongoing evaluation process
Technology Management Team members will oversee the entire evaluation process, prepare biannual (formative) and annual (summative) reports and the committee will evaluate the effectiveness of the Plan.

The District’s four step evaluation process is as follows:
Step I-Set Evaluation Goals
Step II-Monitor, Collect, and Analyze Data
Step III-Determine Recommendations
Step IV-Report to Stakeholders

Blog Posting #1 – Technology Assessments

Education in the 21st century has become nontraditional and technology has become an essential tool for learning and thinking skills in today's school systems. As school leaders it is imperative that we stay abreast of new technologies, know and utilize instructional technology and if we are expected to prepare our students we need to consider increasing our technology effectiveness. We are expected to make sure our students are technology literate, then they must be equipped with lifelong learning and thinking skills necessary to acquire and process information in ever-changing world. Technology isn’t going anywhere and in fact every year bar is raised for our students.

For example, many of our standardized tests are moving to online assessments. Using these assessments can have many pros and cons. Using online assessments can be beneficial because it is more accessible, avoids lost materials, faster turnaround time for scoring and evaluating tests, instantaneous feedback (data on students) and scoring results, less cheating and plagiarism incidents.

However using online assessment can also be problematic. The initial implementation may be costly and challenging, faculty & staff will need time to be trained, software upgrades, technical problems and security issues, learning curve, more variation / inconsistency in student, more difficult detection of cheating, the environment, and the ability to score essay information.

“Many traditional assessment practices consist of essay problem-type examinations and growing reliance on multiple-choice questions, for easy designs. However, it is argued that these assessment practices cannot adequately test for critical thinking, creativity, reflection, and authentic learning. Recent developments in assessment are advocating alternative and diverse assessment methods, including peer assessment, portfolio, reflective journaling, self-assessment, and performance-based assessment, which are deemed to be constructive, authentic, contextualized assessment, and to promote deep learning and skills development. “
- Jeanette M. Bartley,University of Technology, Jamaica,Ch. 1, p. 14, Online Assessment and Measurement: Foundations and Challenges, Hricko & Howell 2005

Nevertheless, many school administrators may be uncomfortable providing leadership in technology because they may be uncertain about implementing effective technology leadership strategies in ways that will improve learning, or they may believe their own knowledge of technology is inadequate. Because technology is credited as being a significant factor in increasing productivity in many industries, some people believe that more effective use of technology in schools could do more to improve educational opportunities and quality. (Clements & Sarama, 2003)

Clements, D. H., & Sarama, J. (2003). Strip mining for gold: Research and policy in educational technology—A response to Fool's Gold. Educational Technology Review, 11(1), 7–69. Retrieved August 29, 2010, from http://www.aace.org/pubs/etr/issue4/clements2.pdf

International Society for Technology in Education. (2000). National educational technology standards for teachers. Retrieved August 31, 2010, from http://cnets.iste.org/teachers/t_stands.html