According to the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology 2006-2020, it appears that we are making progress in implementing technology on every academic and administrative level. There are decreases in the number of schools ranking as Early Technology and Developing Technology and an increase in campuses regarding themselves as Advanced or Target Technology.
While there are several grants available to help districts improve and increase technology in their classrooms, there are still major concerns with technology budgets in general. On my campus, budget is one of the major areas where we fall short on the STaR assessment. While we maintain a good infrastructure for technology, we don’t have the budgetary resources or time allotments to make sure staff is trained on how to use what is at their disposal. Since we also ranked low in the leadership and vision category of the STaR, it seems as if our school board and administrators don’t have enough faith in our technical capability or its importance to allocate a larger budget for technology. Since we are a DAEP campus, it is hard to maintain a curriculum that must be constantly tailored to fit an ever changing classroom. As students come and go frequently throughout the semester, lesson plans become a juggling act. Although technology could ultimately help solve a lot of the problems we have clerically and academically, no one seems ready to make the leap.
The Texas Long Range Plan for Technology mentioned a pilot program called the Texas Virtual School Network (TxVSN) they were testing on JJAEP and DAEP classrooms dealing with the use of online courses for credit recovery. While the program is still in its infancy, I see a lot of potential for the use of this technology in the future education of students, particularly ones that are in and out of the DAEP program. I will be interested to see how the TxVSN model continues to improve and evolve over the next few years.
No comments:
Post a Comment