TECHNOLOGY PLAN:

Educational Rationale:

As technology is thrust into every day life, the importance of preparing today's students to be information gatherers and users has become a popular, yet critical, topic. Two generations ago, college graduates competed locally for jobs; the last generation competed nationally. The current generation of graduates will compete internationally for employment. This global competition moves technology to the forefront. Literature is expounding upon the impact of technology, the need for technology competency, the importance of preparing teachers to use technology, and the critical issue of planning for the infusion of technology into education. While each of these individual issues is a vital concern, they must be addressed as an orchestrated whole; none can be overlooked and ignored when planning for the future of education.

Technology is a critical component to revive the content and delivery of education. In order to maintain a high quality educational system, technology must evolve with a direct correlation to instructional objectives, curriculum goals, and district philosophies. This process will require a strategic and comprehensive long-range plan for the use of technology at the district level coupled with a careful alliance between instruction and technology use in schools. Applying the advances in technology to the inherent practices of education will help achieve a vision of educational excellence previously unattainable.

A powerful vision for using technology focuses on learning, not technology. The full integration of technology into our schools is required for students to be successful today as learners, and tomorrow as workers in an information driven global economy.

Instructional technology provides unprecedented learning opportunities for students. Educators, legislators, private businesses, and community members see technology integration as a national policy. The following are indicators of the success of that the vision:

  • The schools and district provide paths for learning that integrate technology in the curriculum and give curricular opportunities for students to gather, analyze, and present information in order to acquire and produce knowledge.

 

  • The schools and district integrate technology to help teachers facilitate learning by developing and sharing a repertoire of instructional techniques that can be customized based on learner needs and an opportunity for teachers and students to share instructional roles.

 

  • The schools and district utilize technology to employ a variety of methods that assist in evaluating student learning as defined by local, state, and national standards, in order to continuously improve instruction.

 

While technology is an enabling force that brings new capabilities to the learning environment, the mere presence of computers guarantees nothing about their educational value. Technology choices represent value judgements about what is educationally important. There must be a legitimate educational rationale, which can be analyzed by addressing the following questions and/or concerns meant to promote thinking and dialogue (Healy, 1998).

  1. How can computer technology help achieve our educational goals?
  2. Is the technology being utilized to support the instructional goals?
  3. How and why will technology improve the quality of learning?
  4. What activities will technology use replace?
  5. What objective or problem is trying to be solved or augmented with technology?
  6. Who makes software purchasing decisions and upon what criteria are decisions based?
  7. What content can be taught, and how do we measure the outcomes?
  8. What is being learned here? Could this same goal be met as well or better with a real-life experience?
  9. Using technology does not automatically make learning and teaching better. Evaluate current research through the following filters:
    1. What is the time span of the study? Who conducted the study?
    2. Was the type, quality, and use of the software well controlled?
    3. What were the outcome measures?
    4. Were the teacher variables controlled?
  10. A Challenge: The mere presence of computers guarantees nothing about their educational value. Consider the following:
    1. Using a computer will not automatically make students smarter.Comment: Technological fluency is a step beyond technological literacy. To be fluent in technology use means that we can sit down at a computer and use it as easily as we can pick up and read a book in our native language. Of the challenges facing education today, preparing students to be fluent in the use of computational and communication technologies is one of our greatest. Is the computer utilized to support the basic skills of literacy and numeracy: The Three C's: Communication, Collaboration, and Creative Problem Solving. Beyond these are the equally important skills of knowing how to use numbers and data in real-world tasks, the ability to locate and process information relevant to the task at hand, technological fluency, and, most of all, the skills and attitudes needed to be a lifelong learner.Schools that ignore the trends shaping tomorrow will cease to be relevant in the lives of their students, and will quickly disappear. We must transform all formal institutions of learning, from pre-K through college, to insure that we are preparing students for their future, not for our past. (Thornburg, 1997)
    2. A facility with a computer signifies nothing special about a child’s intelligence.
    3. Using a computer may not necessarily prepare elementary or middle school children for the radically different technology and job market when they graduate. Comment: Exposure to computers at an early age provides students with experience in using technology to accomplish tasks, gather and manipulate data using technological tools, and communicate in myriad ways. What they take with them from this experience is that technology has become an integral part of the learning (life) experience. Regardless of the technology used, it is a sure thing that technology of some type will be an integral part of their future work experience. It is similar to the old saying that life is not a paper/pencil test. You learn from real life experiences. A dearth of computer experience at the early grades would not provide students with the reality of what their future will be like.
    4. The key to positive use of any medium is the quality of the adult-child interaction.
    5. Just because students are performing tasks that look technologically sophisticated does not mean they are learning anything important.

 

  1. 21st Century Learning Environment Challenge

 

The 21st Century Learning Environment – education is scrambling to craft this new learning environment – with the tools of the late 20th century!  This new environment is wireless, online, and dynamic; however, teaching is still tethered to the computer with wires and client-based software and mired in efforts to model the Intelligent Classroom, which focuses on projectors, interactive white boards, document cameras, and equipment.   These tools do not fundamentally change learning in the classroom, instead, they fancy it up, often forcing teachers into awkward teaching just to use the tools. 

 

The 21st Century Learning environment is all about connectivity – accessing and utilizing the tools of the web, anywhere, anytime.  Connectivity is the catalyst that is fundamentally changing classroom learning in the same way that it is fundamentally changing the business world.  It is time for a real paradigm adjustment. In the Conroe Independent School District, we are focused on that adjustment. 

 

There are four major components of this paradigm adjustment (WIG’M).

 

1.      Wireless:  The world is your classroom through ubiquitous connectivity.   Without connectivity, you might as well provide students with Big-Chief writing tablets.

 

2.      Internet (web):  The new online environment will squash the proto-typical computer loaded with client-based software.  If it does not run on the web, it will die. 

 

3.      Google:  Google is the archetype for the wireless, online environment.  The developers at Google are aggressively molding the future where applications live on the web, where applications are web-based instead of client-based, and where knowledge is built on the web.

 

4.      Moodle:  Online learning is here.  Moodle is an online course management system, which helps educators create effective online learning communities through strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy.

 

Implications:

We need to teach students to think without being mired in the details of specific applications.  We do not need to teach MSWord to prepare our students for the business world – we need to teach them concepts.  Concepts are generally static, applications are fluid.  It was not long ago when we all needed to know WordPerfect. 

 

The future is not in computers with specific installed applications as we know them today.  With ubiquitous wireless and everything on the web computers are simply devices to access the web.  

 

The Conroe Independent School District is preparing for this future through the following web-based environment initiatives. 

 

Computers: 

Following these belief structures, the Conroe Independent School District made a significant investment in the WebPC .  The WebPC is a wireless, diskless notebook with a minimum of an 8-hour battery life.  Learning can not be tethered to the wall and defined by battery life.

 

Software

Our standard productivity suite of a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software is the web-based GoogleDocs.  This omni-present environment supports the student at home, school, the mall, or anywhere and anytime a student chooses to participate.

 

Implementation:

The future lies in personal portable devices in the model of the iPhone.  At that time, computing will truly be personal.  It will become a commonplace tool but with as significant an impact as the transistor.

 

We are developing this environment around Moodle.  Where teachers have embraced Moodle, we find students and teachers ready for 21st Century Learning.  In these classrooms, we infuse and support their initiative with the WebPC.  The WebPC becomes a ubiquitous tool that students utilize as needed - anywhere, anytime – not as a tool that is utilized in a lab where students march for their scheduled activity.

Traditional educational practices no longer provide students with all the necessary skills for economic survival in today's workplace. Students today must apply strategies for solving problems using appropriate tools for learning, collaborating, and communicating. The following chart lists characteristics representing traditional approaches to learning and corresponding strategies associated with new learning environments:

These new learning environments provide rich opportunities for students to find and utilize current information and resources, and apply academic skills for solving real-world problems. These environments engage students in activities that have educational technology skills and relevant curricular content interwoven.

 

It is not necessarily the electronic tools that a teacher has that make a good teacher.  Just because you are using a lot of technology does not necessarily mean that you are improving learning.  Appropriate tools in the hands of the learners combined with sound

Pedagogy and resources will drive the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




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