Action Plan for improving the use of technology in the classroom at Carroll Elementary.
Data Sources
This plan for improvement will utilize information gathered from the following sources:
1. Student and staff interviews
2. STAR chart data
3. The campus improvement plan
4. AWARE data disaggregation software
5. Long Range Plan for technology, 2006-2020
General Goal of Action Plan as Influenced by the above data sources
Information from the above sources indicates that students at Carroll Elementary most need opportunities to use technology as an active creator of meaning. As it is now, the students’ level of interaction is limited to brief passive encounters during the day.
Student and Staff interviews
Students interviewed reported use of technology being regular, frequent, and superficial. Currently, student occasionally use word processing programs. However, the majority of their interaction consists of using math and reading drill software. These students indicated that they understand the basic skills needed to navigate and use computer programs. This indicates that minimal time and resources will need to go into training out students how to use computer. We can focus directly on introducing the new program.
STAR chart data
This data shows steady improvement in all areas of the campus’s level of technology integration. The weakest area though, is the practical implementation of technology in the classroom. It comes down to the fact that our teachers do not have adequate time or training to successfully use technology to improve their students’ education on a higher level than drill software.
Campus improvement plan
The Carroll Elementary 7th goal for campus improvement is to provide students with opportunities to become lifelong learners. As the trend is for more aspects of our lives to become entwined with technology, we can assume that all meaningful programs designed to promote lifelong learning must include an integral use of technology that the student have access to on a regular basis.
AWARE data disaggregation software
Teachers use this software to make a precise and accurate decision concerning how to best help students with their instructional gaps. This means that teachers can determine with student expectation or TEKS each student needs more work on. Our perennial weakness has been the students’ ability to summarize information and determine what information is critical to an issue and what is merely peripheral to the issue or material at hand.
Long Range Plan for technology, 2006-2020
The data presented in the LRPT states that student view the increased level of fun and efficiency when using technology as primary benefits of enhanced use of technology in the classroom. It follows then that students will engage in interactive activities on the internet with great enthusiasm to the benefit of their education.
Action
Based on the data sources listed above which included findings from week 3, my campus could easily implement a system of WIKIs for our students to use. Sheldon ISD already has access to the free WIKI creator program located here. Few, if any, staff members know about this resource. Once teachers are familiar with this application, it would be relatively simple to implement in the classroom. Student would now have the ability to contribute to a common body of student knowledge concerning any topic the teacher wishes for them to study. In the case of the AWARE data sited above, teachers could easily create a WIKI designed to facilitate an ongoing student conversation on summarization and main idea skills.
Professional Development Prerequisites
In order to make the WIKI program a success the teachers will already need to be familiar with our AWARE software. They will need to use this to help them make decision on what they want their WIKI to cover. Most of our staff is now comfortable with this application, so an online refresher tutorial would suffice to allow us to move with the action plan. Any teachers not familiar with AWARE can simply view the tutorial to get up to speed with the rest of the staff.
Professional Development directly related to the WIKI program
People resonsible
I will work with our technology teacher to create an example WIKI using this program.
Required resources
We will need a computer lab with enough a computer for each attending staff member for one hour. It will take approximately 30 minutes to create a WIKI to use as an example for the staff. It will take another thirty minutes to an hour to plan out the actual development time.
Presentation material
I will show the teachers how we use the example WIKI. This will include information on accessing the WIKI and making contributions to the content. Once the staff is comfortable with this, we will move on to creating WIKIS for their own classroom use. They will learn how to set the subject matter for the WIKI. During this time, we will cover how control who can view and contribute to the WIKI. The development will conclude with a discussion on prepping their students for acceptable use and cyber ethics concerns that may arise as the class uses the WIKI.
Time Line
The example WIKI will be completed by January 8th. The development will take place January 14th. Teachers will be asked to have their WIKIs up and running by January 29th
Part 3
Evaluation
Evaluating the success of this plan is very simple. Each teacher will submit a hyperlink with their name as the text to their department chair. The department chair will combine these hyperlinks into a grade level list. This list will then be forwarded to the school secretary to be collated into one document. Teachers will need to set their WIKIs to allow anybody to view them not necessarily to contribute to them. To see how the WIKIs are working, the principal will need to only open one document to access the WIKIs that each teacher is using.
NOTE:
Nancy Seidensticker and I both worked on using WIKIs. I got the idea to see what my district offered in terms of WIKIS from her entry on the discussion forum. Upon finding that the program is already in place in my district to make WIKIs a reality, I did not want to pass up the opportunity to plan such a low cost/large impact staff development.
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