Activity #6- Technology Plan

By creating a technology plan, a school district evaluates their technology needs as a whole and develops a plan to accomplish what it is they need for their faculty and staff to move forward in a technology driven society. I feel that a technology plan would be very beneficial. It would keep the district on track with what they specifically needed over the course of time and how they were going to successfully follow through. This guideline would involve much research, planning and budgeting. The parts of a technology plan are listed below.

The mission is the school district’s overall goal.

The vision is the school districts long term plan to reach their goals over the next five years.

Shared Values is a mixture of the mission and the vision.

The needs assessment is what the school district wants to obtain for their schools. It would involve various teachers throughout the district evaluating the needs of various grade levels.

Goals and Strategies are what the school district wants to obtain. How do they want to obtain them? This involves a timeline.

Staff Development would be teacher education. How will the school district provide training so that the items that are purchased are used to their full potential?

The budget defines how the school district is going to accomplish the plan. Would they do this through fundraising? State or Federal grants? Donations from the school community?

Monitoring how is the plan going. Are the goals and strategies being met?

The evaluation involves assessment tools such as surveys or rubrics to determine if the overall plan was successful.

Assignment #4 Network Operations

Does the educational system that you are affiliated with offer a shared storage area on the network for students or faculty?------Do you find this beneficial? Since I do not work in a school building with a network we do not have a shared storage area. Each faculty issued computer does have a live storage back up so that if something happened to our computer they can overnight us a new one with everything loaded.

Before reading charper 4 in Frazier and Bailey, were you familiar with Acceptable Use Policies, (AUP's)?--------Have you ever signed or collected one? Does your educational system enforce AUP's?
The faculty must sign an AUP at the beginning of each school year. Our students and parents also sign one. The Confirmation of Agreement is located in the back of the Parent/Student Handbook. I do not collect these forms. They must sign it and mail it to our main office in Norristown. We have had issues in the past when students violated the rules and then some of their privileges were taken away.

What type of Email System does your educational system implement? Do you use this mail system at school?.......from home? explain..... The school uses email powered by Google which is very efficient because everything is in one place. We can access our email, calendar and documents from any computer. All of our email addresses are @pavcs.us. Our parents and students use an Internet server that the school monitors and they access their email through Blackboard Academic Suite. All of their email addresses are @mypavcs.org.

Overall, from this chapter, the most important thing that I learned is....Acceptable Usage Policies must be put into place and the students and faculty must be monitored. Everyone always thinks that the students will get into trouble on the Internet however, it seems that more and more school districts are having problems with their faculty. This year was the first year that I had to sign an AUP as a teacher. My school will no longer let us use our school email account for personal emails. We also shouldn’t be viewing certain websites from our computers and we should only be ‘surfing the web’ on our lunch or after school hours. The more people learn about the internet and computers the harder it will be for a technology coordinator.

Desktop Support

Technology coordinators are receiving less and less money each year; therefore they need to make smart purchases with the money they receive each year. It is important to research and compare prices before making major purchases. Purchasing the proper licensing for software, anti-virus software and the proper equipment that the teachers can use within the district is extremely important.

When purchasing software the technology coordinator must make sure they purchase the right type of licensing. Sometimes when you purchase a computer certain types of software are already loaded. Other times you as the technology coordinator might have to install the software on each computer. If this is the case, academic licensing could be used. It usually costs per computer and might be the cheapest way to license all the computers within a district. Also, the technology coordinator needs to be organized and keep inventory of all the software being used within the school.

One virus can wipe out your computer or an entire network. It is very important that anti-virus software is installed on each computer that uses the Internet and is updated regularly. Teachers and students must be told not to open attachments from people they don’t know as well as click on advertisements which can result in spyware and adware issues.

Currently, my school has a Help Desk in place. We send an email with our technology issue and we receive a trouble ticket number. Once the technology issue has been resolved the tech department closes the trouble ticket. Usually our issues are resolved within 48 hours. I would like my school to develop a technology plan. As far as I know we don’t have a committee of teachers that work closely with the technology department to purchase items that might be needed.

Software Selection Form Reflection

At PAVCS we do not use Software Selection Forms because we don’t purchase software often. All student materials are purchased through a company called K12 Inc. They also send our student at the time of enrollment a computer with standard programs already installed, such as Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

Technology is already integrated throughout our curriculum. In science and history students are exploring the web and watching video clips. To help increase math and language skills our 2nd through 12th graders use Study Island for at least 20 minutes a day.
Over the summer our faculty had a profession development day on how to use Study Island effectively with our class.

I feel that that the Software Selection Form would be very beneficial. Purchasing software for an entire school or even just a classroom can be very costly. By following the form and taking a closer look at the software you can make sure it meets all of your needs. I like the table where a teacher would evaluate the program to see how effective it is. Technology is a great tool if you know how to use it. This form would allow you to research and use the program before making an investment.

First Class

I enjoyed meeting everyone at our first class. We can learn a lot from one another since our work experiences differ so much.

The article I was assigned to read was The Digital Disconnect. I had a hard time relating to the issues in this article. Since I work for a virtual school, our students are able to use the Internet without any restrictions by the school. The parents are in control of what their child views on the Internet.

I enjoyed the videos of a blog and wiki. They were simple and to the point. I can't wait to use Teacher Tube with my students on Elluminate (my online classroom).

I'm looking forward to working with everyone this semester.