Blog Posting #1

The Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020, is a plan to supply a 21st Century education to students and to provide employees and administrators with the tools, resources and professional development need to be successful. This plan creates a vision that can be shared through teaching and learning and produces better student achievement. The plan has 4 different components. These components are: Teaching and Learning; Educator Preparation and Development; Leadership, Administration and Instructional Support; and Infrastructure for Technology.

I would like to focus on the area of “Educator Preparation and Development”. This area is highly important to me because it is an area that is overlooked in education as a whole. According to the Texas STaR chart statistics, not much progress has been made on a state level. After analyzing data from a survey taken across the state of Texas over past three years, 71% or more, of the teachers who took the test, were placed in the category of “Developing Tech”. This means that there is room for improvement. After analyzing data from a survey taken from the school I work for (Elizabeth Smith Elementary), I discovered that for the past three years, two of the three years, our teachers were placed in the category of Advanced Tech. Progress has been made on a local level.

The trends that I see are that on a state level, the teachers are continuing to remain nearly the same. The status of “Developing” Tech seems to be the norm. As for my campus, I am proud to say that we are at least higher than the state as a whole. We have increased from “Developing” Tech to “Advanced”. We are heading a step in the right direction.

Although we may be offered the help of an instructional technologist on our campuses and a few training here and there. It simply is not enough. Most educators have busy schedules with work, family and extra-curricular activities. If the national, state and local areas together could come together to provide educators with staff development opportunities that were helpful, affordable, flexible and less time consuming, the benefits would be endless. A few of my ideas include: giving teachers incentives for their time, providing equipment, providing cost-free training, offering substitutes or teachers who attend trainings and establishing follow-up training.