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.

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.