Technology Action Plan

Organization Chart

This action plan is designed with all stakeholders in mind. It involves administrators, teachers, students and
parents. Let’s start with the organizational chart. Without including the whole chart, here is a brief summary
of who is involved. Each person involved is listed from order of power and knowledge. The list is as follows:
the Board of Trustees, the District Superintendent, the Chief Administrative Officer of School Leadership and
Administrative Services, the Executive Director of the West Secondary Learning Community, the Principal of
W. T. White High School, the Associate Principal/ Special Programs Director, the Campus Technologist, the
Teacher Technologist, the Tech Team (a group of technology representatives from each department), the
teachers and staff, the students, and finally the parents. By involving all stakeholders the plan will have a
greater chance of success with less resistance. The action plan has two major parts to it, professional
development and evaluation. Both parts are necessary to successfully integrating technology into our school.
 Students/Parents

The students and parents are responsible for staying informed and keeping an open mind about the changes
taking place with regards to technology. They are encouraged to participate in learning about new technology as
well as providing feedback about their experiences.

Professional Development

The Professional Development Plan will be a three tiered plan in order to completely encompass the teacher
with comfortable use of technology to collect data, evaluate data, and make decisions with regards of
curriculum. Activities will be developed with the goal of creating a comprehensively well rounded staff that
can use technology to both evaluate and present material to students.

Tier 1: Data Collection

Each teacher will have to attend training on the use of MyData Portal. This is the DallasISD way of finding
data on students with regards to educational history of a students. This MyData Portal training will
accomplish the following objectives for teachers:

• Teachers will be able to log in to MyData portal.

• Teachers will be able to view their current list of students enrolled in their class by section.

• Teachers will be able to access each students learning summary.

 • Teachers will be able to access students’ assesment history including but not limited to ACPs,
Benchmark tests, TAKS tests, ITBS tests, Logramos, ITED, and LEP testing.

• Teachers will be able to view and evaluate student data based on TEKS and SEs.

• Teachers will be able to export relevant data to Excel Spreadsheet for further evaluation.

The second activity related to data collection is training on the Texas STaR Chart. Teachers do their STaR
Chart each year without fully understanding its purpose as well as its use it the evaluation of technology
throughout the state. This STaR Chart professional development will accomplish the following objectives for
teachers:

• Teachers will be able to communicate the purpose of the STaR Chart.

• Teachers will be able to access school data as well as state-wide data.

• Teachers will be able to communicate the 4 key areas of the STaR Chart as well as what the ratings in
each category mean.

Tier 2: Data Evaluation and Manipulation

Each teacher will attend training on evaluating and manipulating data to make it more relevant to others.
Each teacher will have to attend training on the use of software for the purpose of evaluating data. These will
include but not be limited to Spreadsheet applications as well as Presentation applications. While the training
itself is very specific in nature, it is meant to create a feeling of safety and comfort with these programs so
that teachers may use it both in and outside the classroom. This Data Manipulation training will accomplish
the following objectives for teachers:

• Teachers will be able create charts using downloaded data in order to evaluate more effectively.

• Teachers will be able use Excel to create multiple charts and graphs based on the task.

• Teachers will be able to identify which charts are more appropriate to use for specific tasks.

• Teachers will be able to create a presentation in order to communicate their findings on student
assessment.

• Teachers will create a presentation in groups to be presented to the whole group at the end of training.

Tier 3: Technology Training for Instructional Use

Teachers will have their choice of technology training in order to gain new skills and tools to use for
instructional purposes. Each teacher will be required to take at least two classes, but will encouraged to take
all classes possible. The following is a list of class and what they will generally accomplish for the teacher.

• Smart Board – This training will be used to help the teacher become familiar with the setup and use
of Smart Boards. After this training, the teacher will be able to connect their Smart Board and use it to
present a lesson or create a project in which students will use the Smart Board.
 • ELMO Document Camera – This training will be used to get the teacher familiar with the setup and
use of the ELMO document camera for the use of instruction and to also make the school more
environmentally conscious of the overuse of paper. Teachers will learn different ways to incorporate the
document camera into their lessons in order to come into the 21st Century as well as consume less paper.

• Video Conference – This training will be used to open the teacher up the a new resource that can be
used to teach students as well as interact with other educational setting across the continents.

• Smart Board Slate – This training will be used to get the teacher more comfortable with the use of the
Smart Board Slate tablet. This training will open the teacher up to making class more interactive when
the slate can be passed from teacher to student and back.

• Teacher/ Student Network Drive – This training will be used to familiarize teachers with the shared
school network for both teachers and students. This training will show teachers how to access the shared
network and post documents to it for other teachers and faculty to access. It will also show them how to
access the student drive to allow students to post their work for each teacher and other students to access.

• Student/Parent Technology College – This training is designed to address all stakeholders involoved
in school. Once a month a Technology College will be offered for both parents and students. This
training will be offered to get both parents and students more comfortable with the technology that will
used for instruction. By involving the stakeholders, it will be easier to get students on board when the
technology is used in class. This also gives people who do not have access to technology a chance to
“play” with it outside of the classroom setting.

Evaluation Planning

The evaluation of the technology integration will be done in multiple ways. The first evaluation will be with
regards to the schools STaR Chart data. This evaluation will be done by the Tech Team and then presented to
the Special Program Director and Principal. The Tech Team will undertake this task because of their level of
comfort and experience with technology. The team will evaluate each year’s data in comparison with the
previous year. Areas still in need of improvement or areas that are regressing will be identified. For each
area identified possible causes for the lack of improvement or causes for regression will be discussed and
recorded. After identifying causes, the tech team will brainstorm possible solutions for bringing our campus
up to the next level on the STaR Chart. This data will be compiled into a presentation to be made to the
Special Program Director and Principal. Since the STaR chart is not reported by teacher and is confidential, it
can be used as an accurate source of data collection from the state. It is a respected tool for gauging
technology integration within the school.

The second form of evaluation will be that of evaluating the effectiveness of professional development
offered within the school. Instead of the usual evaluation form used at the end of professional development, a
project based evaluation will be used to both gauge a teacher’s learning and give the teacher a chance to apply
their newly gained knowledge before using it within the classroom. To start, each professional development
will have a follow-up meeting used for evaluation. Each class will be assigned a project to complete at the
end of the training. For example, following the Smart Board or Smart Board Slate training the teacher will
have to come up with a five minute lesson to present to the rest of the training class using the new technology.
At the assignment of the project a rubric will be created so that the teachers have a clear idea of what the
expectation is for each project. For the Video Conference, a group of staff would be required to host a
follow-up video conference organized cooperatively by a group from different areas. Again, a clear rubric of
the expectations will be provided and the group will be required to work together to decide on the topic as
well as the when and where of the conference. These evaluations will serve two purposes. After all projects
are presented, the data collected from the rubrics can be evaluated by the Tech Team along with the Principal
and Special Program Director. This data can be analyzed by evaluating how many teachers received
Accomplished, Proficient, Progressing, or Below Expectation. If the majority of the teachers have managed
to get Proficient or Accomplished on their follow-up project, then the professional development is successful.
If the alternate occurs, then professional development needs to be re-evaluated for more efficiency and
effectiveness.

The third form of evaluation will be internal to the school and done on a semester basis. It will be a
combination of an anonymous survey done by staff along with data collected directly from an evaluation of
the Teacher and Student Shared Drives at the school. The Tech Team again will be heavily relied upon to
accomplish both of these tasks. They will be required to evaluate the usage of the network drives by
comparing the amount of data on those drives previous to this current evaluation. This will quantified by both
the amount of data and the number of people using these network drives. Those staff members not utilizing
this resource will be identified and target for more training and encouragement. The next part of this internal
evaluation is an anonymous survey. Use a web survey would be the most efficient way to do this on such a
large campus without being considered an inconvenience. Teachers will be answering survey questions on
what technology they have access to as well as how often they use this technology. It will also have a place to
leave comments, concerns or suggestions so that this survey can be both qualitative as well as quantitative.
The survey responses will be evaluated and presented along with suggestions to address the areas of
weakness. Examples of this would be expanding the budget so that more teachers have access to technology.
Creating collaboration period activities to utilize time built into the teacher day to learn more about and use
technology with their core area peers as well as collaboration with other cores off during the same period.
Recommendations can be made for the use of Teacher Prep/Staff Development Days to allow teachers to
“play” with the technology they will teach with on non-instructional time.

The next form of evaluation can be done from the student’s and parent’s point of view. When evaluating the
effectiveness of technology, we need to keep our stakeholders in mind. If too much focus is put on the
teacher and the school then we will lose sight of our true objective, creating a 21st Century Learner. We will
gauge their progress by gauging their participation in technology based learning at school such as the Solar
Car Team or Robotics Team. Both students and parents will be surveyed. This can be done within a class
that everyone has, Advisory. Both student and survey parents can be given anonymous surveys. Like the
staff survey, they will have both qualitative and quantitative data that can be collected and evaluated by the
Tech Team. The purpose of the anonymity is to keep both students and parents completely honest about their
responses. These surveys can be offered in both English and

By approaching evaluation from multiple aspects, there is a better chance that change will occur in a
positive direction. Evaluation will be looked at from as high as the state down to training and
technology use. Evaluation will be done from every point of view possible, the administrator, the
teacher, the student, and the parent. By evaluating from different points of view, a more accurate
snapshot of the campus’ technology culture can be taken.