Texas STaR Chart Reveiw

I gathered data from the STaR chart results for Clear Lake High School in Clear Creek ISD for three years. There are four areas of measurement; Teaching & Learning, Educator Preparation, Administration & Support and Intrastructure. While each area is important for the examination of the success of technology advancements on a campus I will examine the area of Educator Preparation. According to the state standards 74.2% of all campuses reporting in 2007-2008 are at the Developing Tech level and 19.9% are at the Advanced Tech level. The advanced tech level adresses the integration of technology into teaching and learning and the regular use of online resources. On these campuses 60% of the educators meet SBEC standards and 20% to 25% of the budget is allocated for professional staff development around technology standards. Our campus was in the advanced tech level for all three of the years I examined the data. While I believe our district does a very good job encouraging the use of technology in the classroom, I see greater allocation of resources to equipment and support personnel than I do to teacher preparation and and development. What time and resources are dedicated to teacher training and development are done during a teacher's conference period which is not a time when the teacher can really focus on learning new task. I believe if our campus wants to move forward in this area, to the target tech level, we will need to make a more conscious decision to dedicate professional staff development days to teacher training in technology and to make that training appropriate to the level of the teacher's expertise. Our campus is very large and like most campuses we have teachers who love technology and are very tech savvy and we have those who muddle their way through. For a training to be effective you must meet the teacher where they are and move them forward, so some assessment of current level would be necessary before the training is developed and implemented.

Readings Quotes and Comments

Week 2 Quotes

From Compliance to Commitment by Burns

“Not only did the scarcity of resources breed more collaboration within classrooms, it also yielded greater collaboration between classrooms as teachers started to leverage hardware resources across classrooms.”

What a great result! I think as teachers we are always feeling like there are not enough technology resources but this article and this quote remind us that as students work together and collaborate with limited resources, learning is taking place for the student and for the teacher!

From The Seven C’s of Learning by Richardson

“There’s a whole new world out there with a whole new set of skills that our kids need to learn to manage.”

This is the focus of CTE education on our campus and I believe across the state; “The 21st century learner”. It is our most important task, to prepare students to be successful, productive citizens in the next century and beyond.

From Document Management Tools by McLeod

“We academics tend to be document pack rats.”

How true! I wish I could get to the place where I had only electronic files and felt comfortable with that. I am beginning to do that with my personal documentation but I am only about halfway there!

From Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom by Prensky

“Change is the order of the day in our kids’ twenty-first-century lives.”

If we are going to be effective in the classroom with our students we have to embrace the idea of change and how quickly it happens and how easily our students adapt to changes.

From Assessing Your Assets by Holub

“The average school district looses more than $80,000 a year on lost or damaged IT assets..”

I experienced this first hand recently at my district when we got a virus that impacted the entire system. Since laptops had “deep freeze” on them they were not affected so they were doled out for daily use and when they were returned, batteries were on them, power cords were missing and half of them did not make it back to the carts for months! This is a perfect example of how IT assets are not used with respect for the cost of the tools.

The Case for Open Source by Guhlin

"A lack of standardization can also present a problem."

I have found that lots of the open sources are great tools they are difficult to manipulate, especially for students and with time constraints that sometimes forces students to give up on using the open sources, at least during class time.

Real Projects in a Digital World by Boss & Krauss

"Technology is the hook we use to get kids into significant projects and to get communities into significantly wanting to support those projects."

At the high school level the hook is showing students how the technology opens a world to them. The hook is developing challenging projects that allow them to use technology to complete them!

My Technology Readiness

During these assignments we have taken three assessments to determine our current level of knowledge about technology, our ability to implement technology into the accomplishment of the TEKS and to take a look at the future goals of technology in instruction. Because I teach in the CTE area of high school I have lots of access and support for the use of technology in my classroom. I scored fairly well on the first assessment in all four areas. The one area I have a weakness in is the creation of documents in a virtual setting. I do not have a lot of opportunity to work with those skills and thus the weakness. My students are incredibly competent in those areas and I make them part of assignments I give but I usually have to get assistance from the digital graphics teacher to give a good assessment of the use of the tools. The second assesment looked at how data regarding technology usage is gathered and used in our school and district. The teacher survey looked at how much we believed our campus and district were addressing the needs of the 21st century learner with the use of technology. The readings addressed issues such as the re-defining literacy in terms of the 21st century learner and the impact of technology. My district is most definetly looking at data and the impact of technology on the new learners, but the organization of education is a huge machine and does not move quickly or make changes easily. The third assessment was focused on our potential future role as an administrator and access and usage of technology. Our district has a large, very intricate data collection and storage system. While teachers do not have access to some data such as discipline, personal information, and other information; that information is shared with teachers on an as needed basis. I am familiar with the scheduling system and although I don't have access I have a fairly clear understanding of how it is built, accessed and used in the daily functioning of the campus.

The assessments were interesting and helpful to help identify areas of weakness but it was not as user friendly as I thought it should be. Some areas leave opportunity for answers that may lead to unclear conclusions.

New Blogger

Well I have managed to set up a blog for the course assignment but I am not really sure what I will use the blog for. I do read other people's blogs but I am still a little uncomfortable with so much personal information being on the world wide web! I will assume that the course will connect all the students together through the blogs which will be an easier opportunity to share learning information with each other.