Web Conference Reflection

The web conference provded some good information. I especially liked the powerpoint presentation as it was the outline of the class. The one thing that I would have liked to have seen different is an outline sent to us before the conference and an opportunity for us to send in questions concerning what the subject is. That would give the instructor the ability to research the questions and provide feedback to us. This would make the web conference more productive and more information exchanged. I did not use my web camera but will consider it in the future. I did like seeing who was on the conference. Overall it was good and helped me a lot.

E-Rate Week 2

National Educational Technology Plan

Four areas are the focus of the plan:

·         Be clear about the outcomes we seek.

·         Collaborate to redesign structures and processes for effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility.

·         Continually monitor and measure our performance.

·         Hold ourselves accountable for progress and results every step of the way

President Obama has recognized that the United States is no longer the leader in College Graduates and by the year 2020 his vision is that the United States will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the World. Learning through Technology will be accomplished by understanding how people learn, personalizing their learning, having a universal design for learning, allowing it to be formal and informal.  All learners will need to be engaged and empowered in their learning experiences which will prepare them to be creative and knowledgeable as we continue to move to a globally networked society. Assessing the new technology, learning will constantly change.  We will need to make sure we measure what is important understanding which would be the variables and have embedded measurements, which would be the constants with ongoing review.  Feedback needs to move into a real-time environment and we will need to continue to be persistent in our learning knowledge. We will need to leverage technology to assist in improving. Teachers will need to work together to empower each other to become highly effective .  Having a standardized  infrastructure  allowing access to new tools  will aide in cost efficiency.  This will improve learning while making more efficient use of resources. The challenges we will face are how to design and integrate a system that will allow us to have this ongoing highly productive learning experience and interaction with other learners

Conroe's E-rate and Technolgoy Information

Conroe’s percentage of economically disadvantaged is 32%. With this number our e-rate discount is 50%.  E-rate pays for Internet connectivity, which include telephone systems, routers, switches, maintenance and communications-related expenses.  With this discount we have been able to connect 100% of our classrooms to the Internet.  A total of 3,225 classrooms.  Thereby allow all 49,326 students to have Internet connection in their daily learning environment.  Our allotment for technology expenditures per student is $242.32.  With this money the district has been able to bring computers in the class room and other tablet technology Throughout the school year professional technology courses are made available during the Staff development days.  Various people are in charge of the trainings depending on the skill set.  The CTE directory – Gregg Shipp plays a major role in assessing the skills set needed by the teachers and assuring the training is offered.   Feedback is provided at each Staff development meeting on the previous training to ensure the goals were met.  This allows for changes to be made and new assessments to be put in place. Assessing the student learning with technology is performed by each Teacher on a individual basis with a set of guidelines provided by the CTE department.  This allows teachers to customize their students learning through the use of the technology that has been put in place and to allow for new technology to be introduced as the student masters the previous technology. The areas that are not covered such as Voice Mail, Personal Development training, Software, personal computers, fax machines, cameras are budgeted from our Technology Expenditures Budget which is -- $11,952,500.00. 

Technology Assessments

As technology becomes part of our lives many things must be considered.  In order for students to learn and grow with Technology they must have the right tools and training.  This is nothing new in the world of Education.  What is new is the fact that Technology is such a young entity that many many of the educators have not grown up with technology and they are currently learning the skills.  The question arises --- how can the teachers teach this subject when they themselves do not know the answers.  Therefore the key thing we must realize is the teaching of technology is a learning skill for both the teachers and the students.  The teachers know the traditional way to teach therefore they do know most of the answers.  That is a key in this process.  What the teachers have to do is learn how to teach with the assistance of technology.  This sounds very easy, however my experience has taught me that some teachers are not interested in changing the way they teach.  They feel they should be able to teach the exact same way they have always taught.  Hence the problem.  Students of today are growing up with Technology and their leaning skills are being developed with these skills.  In many cases they have greater skills than the teachers.  When they are expected to learn in the traditional way  a problem is created.  The learning community will struggle with this until a generation of technology driven teachers have mastered the skill of technology based learning.