Texas Long Range Plans for Technology & Me

This section of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology gives practical and important information regarding the need to provide students with teachers and leaders who can give them the technology training they need. I agree that teachers must be trained appropriately and adequately and, also, continuously. I also agree that there’s an urgency in this regard. My campus is sorely behind in training teachers and integrating technology into our curriculum. When I started working there two years ago, the school owned two data projectors—and they were stored in a closet unopened! No one knew or cared about using them. And another funny (sad!) thing is how they acquired them…the P.E. teacher told me that she was instructed to choose a health text, and when she had narrowed her decision to two, she asked each sales rep what perk they would throw in—one of them said he’d give us two projectors. So there you have it. Thankfully, those projectors are now being used by two of our science/social studies teachers on a daily basis.

The recommendations to LEA’s are sound. The first three address the issue of educator training. This is really key to the success of any technology initiative. My district offers little professional development. We are a poor district and our lack of tools, perhaps, makes training seem a little useless. I don’t see evidence or hear talk of the development of strategies to help school personnel master the technology standards. I am rather new to the district, and I need to learn more about what’s going on—maybe I’m just missing something (?). Likewise, I don’t see any documentation going on as to any progress teachers may be making toward this mastery. To my principal’s credit, I am always allowed to attend training that I find to help me learn what I need to know. I am given a minimal amount of money toward this and end up using mostly my own money, as I will when I attend the Texas Library Association Conference next week in Houston. My campus does not have a technology coach or mentor of any kind. When I have a question, I go to a young man who teaches on our campus and is pretty patient with my questions. Besides him, I can only think of two other teachers who are interested in using technology effectively in their teaching.

We have a long way to go, and the challenge of documents like the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology and the Texas Star Chart will surely help us understand the vision, the process, and the assessments necessary to reach the goals set in our technology standards.