Jefferson Elementary is an elementary in the Harlingen School District that serves approximately 333 students, with the support of about 50 employees. The administration at Jefferson strives to provide the adequate support for the staff to improve the education of our students. The technology plan in place meets the needs specifically for this elementary school in conjunction to the Harlingen CISD Technology Plan. A rather different approach was taken while assessing the needs of our campus.
Action
While other campuses focused on their lowest scoring area of the STaR Chart, at Jefferson, the emphasis was placed on the area closes to meeting Target Tech and in this case Teaching and Learning, and the Educator Preparation and Development. While our teachers are highly qualified to teach, and know their content areas well, they are not as comfortable integrating technology into their daily lessons. Therefore this technology plan’s purpose is to encourage and motivate the teachers by having Jefferson Elementary reach Target Tech in one specific area first – which is the area nearest to Target –then focus on the other areas thereafter. This approach derives from the notion that success inherits success and while Target Tech was met in 2010-2011, with this plan, it can be met again and maintained permanently.
Vision With the integration of Cadre 1, which are the Digital Classroom and the media center upgrade, Jefferson Elementary was able to close the gap between internet connected devices per student ratio. While the goal remains as a one-to-one standard, the 43 devices added this school year makes for an aproximately 10% increase in inventory, or a 10% gap closure towards Target Tech. While other schools in the Harlingen school district have ratios ranging from three-to-one to five-to-one internet connected devices per student, Jefferson Elementary’s approximate ratio stands on or very extremely near a two-to-one ratio. That is backed up by a very strong technical support that provides a fast response time for technical issues and maintains a consistently strong Internet Access Connectivity Speed throughout the entire school. Jefferson also counts with other classroom technology such as digital projectors mounted in every classroom ceiling. They project from a cameras found in every classroom as well as from a laptop. This coincides because every school teacher in the district is assigned one. There is a mobile laptop cart assigned to the library which any classroom teacher can check out for student use. We have two computer labs one with approximately 35 desktop computers and the other with about 15 desktop computers. With the internet connected devices at Jefferson Elementary, the technical support, and the internet network distance learning capabilities rank high at our school, however, part of this proposed plan is to make our infrastruction for technology – Key Area IV – a Target Tech area. That would include distance learning capabilities and part of our plan is to train our staff to archive lessons using technology that students could access from anywhere in an effort to score higher in this area.
Implementation The implementation phase of this endeavor will begin with this school year’s second semester. At which time the goal is to take the over 200 years teaching experience by all the Jefferson staff members combined and begin an archive of lessons and tutoring sessions. This ongoing process will allow a more personalized approach to learning. Students will be granted access to this workspace as readers of such to be able to view lessons done by different teachers in different and/or same contexts. These lessons will follow the district timelines and TEKS in all subject areas of instruction. The key component is the use of technology to house and access these lessons. The process will consist of creating a Wiki workspace for the entire school and create a page for each grade level. Those pages will be divided by subjects, reporting categories, and skills for accessibility purposes. These lessons will be accessible from any locations with an internet connection. Therefore, Jefferson students can use these lessons to reinforce the knowledge and understanding of various skills as well as tutoring sessions. The concept follows the classroom flip model, but the goal is to reach Target Tech in the Key Area IV Infrastructure for Technology.
Goals Jefferson Elementary's technology goal is to meet Target Tech in the STaR Chart, provide technology support for the Jefferson staff members, and create a 21st century learning environment for the students that we service.
Wayne Brent and Christopher Johnson from EdTech magazine .....say that Goals are simple a specific target to be reached and how that target will be measured. The areas identified by the Texas Star Chart as our needs are the Teaching and Learning as well as the Educator Preparation and Development. Due to the complacent nature of our campus because training is not mandated, our teachers also need a buy in to continue with the implementation of technology on our campus; therefore we chose fun and motivating activities that are easy, online, and free. The following goals are set up to identify our timeline and the tasks we will implement. Wayne, Brent & Johnson Christopher (March 2011). Classroom Improving Classroom Engagement through Technological Innovation: The Teaching and Learning Benefits of Technology V . Retrieved from