Technology Evaluation Plan

Hayley Bragdon, Jeff Richardson, Cody Ryal, and Dana Ryal

 The technology plan retrieved from Bulloch County School System (Strategic Plan. (2016,
January 06) Retrieved from https://bcss-ga.schoolloop.com/strategicplan) was used as a
comparison site to Forsyth County. The Bulloch County plan was useful as a benchmark because
the plan is also current expiring at the end of school year 2018.The plan contained several similar
components dealing with budgets, frameworks, communications and technology hardware, and
numbers of terminal users served. The sizes and demographics of the two systems diverged as
Bulloch County is more agrarian with smaller overall numbers of students, teachers, and
facilities.

The technology plan from Forsyth County School System (Technology & Information
Services / About. (2017). Retrieved September 16, 2018, from
https://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/page/818) is the plan we decided to evaluate. We made this
decision based upon the overall readability of the plan as well as the plan being current through
end of school year 2018 with detailed annual plans to revisit and revise. The plan contained
graphics that represented the information making the information more palatable. The plan also
related well to the state lexile statistics showing that Forsyth County School System consistently
performs near the top of the overall student growth and performance indices. These two factors,
current plan and high performance, contributed to our curiosity and lead us to them as our
evaluation choice.

The National Center For Technology Planning (NCTP) website was on the list of resources
provided for this assignment. We reviewed the article on Technology Planning: Recipe for
Success (Technology Planning: Recipe for Success. (1994, March). Retrieved September 16,
2018, from http://www.nctp.com/html/tp_recipe.cfm) to reference the information needed to
begin the process of building a technology plan. The “recipe” gives an excellent guideline for
students as they begin looking at and evaluating technology plans.

While working on a rubric to evaluate technology plans, we examined many technology

plans from a variety of school systems. For this technology plan from Floyd County Schools
(Floyd County Schools Three Year Plan. (2017). Retrieved September 16, 2018, from
https://www.floydboe.net/domain/1883), we closely looked at their information that they
provided on their inventory. We compared their information to other technology plans to see the
differences and similarities. We mostly looked at the breakdown of the inventory and how
specific each system was. This information helped us create our Assessment of
Telecommunication Services section on our rubric.

Before creating our technology plan rubric, we explored the Georgia Department of
Education website (Telecommunication Services section on our rubric. Instructional Technology.
(n.d.). Retrieved September 16, 2018, from http://www.gadoe.org/Technology-
Services/Instructional-Technology/Pages/default.aspx) to better understand the elements of
technology plans. The most helpful resource on this website was a rubric that the Georgia
Department of Education created in 2013. This was beneficial because it provided our group
with an example to show us the expectations for technology plans for all of Georgia’s school
systems.
 While creating our rubric, we ran into difficulties finding a technology plan that
specifically described resources for accessible technology. We explored the ADA website
(Accessibility of State and Local Government Websites to People with Disabilities. (2003, June).
Retrieved September 16, 2018, from https://www.ada.gov/websites2_scrn.pdf) looking for
resources on technology for Americans with disabilities to make sure that we were not
overlooking these sections in the technology plans that we examined. This website also showed
our group different ways to make websites accessible for Americans with disabilities. Lastly, it
became very helpful in our recommendations section of our evaluation because the technology
plan that we evaluated needed improvement in this section.

Our group used Writing a Technology Plan by Katrina L. Miday (Miday, Katrina L.
(2011). Writing a Technology Plan. State Library of Ohio.
https://www.webjunction.org/content/dam/WebJunction/Documents/ohio/Writing-a-Technology-
Plan.pdf) about how to write a technology plan to learn about what should go into a technology
plan. Once we understood what was in a technology plan, we could better understand the
assignment. We referred back to this website many times while we were evaluating technology
plans. We also referred to this website often when we were creating our rubric to grade
technology plans.

Our group did not use the Rubric Maker (Rubric maker. (2018). Rubric Maker.
Tech4Learning, Inc. https://rubric-maker.com/) to create our rubric, however, we did use it as a
resource. We used it to help us begin the first stages of creating a technology plan rubric. We
looked at all the different ways that rubrics can be set up and the different points systems that
rubrics can have. Once we decided on these things all we had left to do was to plug in our
information.

The eBoardsolutions website (5 Key Areas Every K-12 District Should Include in Their
Technology Plan. 5 Key Areas Every K-12 District Should Include in Their Technology Plan.
eBOARDsolutions. https://eboardsolutions.com/5-key-areas-every-district-should-include-in-
their-technology-plan/) was one of the websites that our group first looked at. This website gave
us five key things that all school systems should include in their technology plan. This was
helpful to see some key items that everyone should include so that we could use this information
in our rubric. This website helped us to get started on setting up our technology plan rubric.

As our group worked on the technology plan rubric we reviewed many technology plans. One of
the technology plans that we examined was Gordon County School System’s Technology Plan
(McCown, Dr. Bill. (2011). Three-Year Technology Plan. Gordon County School System). This
plan gave our group several great ideas of what should be included in a technology plan. We
compared this technology plan with many other technology plans to create our rubric.
 Technology Plan
Rubric 1 2 3
The technology plan The technology plan The technology plan provides
Goals states generic goals for identifies specific clearly stated goals, as well as an
the system. current year goals for established 1 - 3-year action plan
the school system. for areas that need improvement.
There are future growth
directives, and scalable growth
options for on-lining possible
additional facilities.
There are professional There are several There are professional
Professional development ideas professional development models that include
Development listed on the technology development ideas and onboarding, enterprise
plan. possible timeline ranges applications training, and personal
listed on the technology growth options along with
plan. proposed implementation
timelines.
The technology plan The technology plan The technology plan lists the
Assessment of lists the total quantity lists the types of types of telecommunication
telecommunication of telecommunication telecommunication services and hardware as well as
services, hardware, services and hardware services and hardware the total quantity for the school
software, etc. within the school for the school system. It system. It also includes a
system. also includes a breakdown of facilities and
breakdown of facilities quantities per school in the
and quantities per system. The plan includes
school in the system, proposals for scalable future
including the service unified telecommunication
dates of those facilities. services and hardware for phasing
out older systems.
The technology plan The technology plan specifically
Accessibility of does not specifically states and explains how
Technology Resources state any resources for technology resources are
the Americans with accessible to every student.
(ADA)
Disabilities Act
There is a vague budget There is a specific There is a detailed budget with
Budget included in the budget included in the growth plans listing financial
technology plan. technology plan. options.
The technology plan The technology plan The technology plan explains
Ongoing Evaluation does not list population lists population growth population growth predictions
growth predictions. using models and model sources.
predictions/models.

Total Points: /18

 We evaluated Forsyth County’s Technology Plan. The URL is
https://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/cms/lib/GA01000373/Centricity/Domain/75/Three%20Year%20Tech

Technology Plan
Rubric 1 2 3
The technology plan The technology plan The technology plan provides
Goals states generic goals for identifies specific clearly stated goals, as well as an
the system. current year goals for established 1 - 3-year action plan
the school system. for areas that need improvement.
There are future growth
directives, and scalable growth
options for on-lining possible
additional facilities.
There are professional There are several There are professional
Professional development ideas professional development models that include
Development listed on the technology development ideas and onboarding, enterprise
plan. possible timeline applications training, and
ranges listed on the personal growth options along
technology plan. with proposed implementation
timelines.
The technology plan The technology plan The technology plan lists the
Assessment of lists the total quantity lists the types of types of telecommunication
telecommunication of telecommunication telecommunication services and hardware as well as
services, hardware, services and hardware services and hardware the total quantity for the school
software, etc. within the school for the school system. It system. It also includes a
system. also includes a breakdown of facilities and
breakdown of facilities quantities per school in the
and quantities per system. The plan includes
school in the system, proposals for scalable future
including the service unified telecommunication
dates of those facilities. services and hardware for phasing
out older systems.
The technology plan The technology plan specifically
Accessibility of does not specifically states and explains how
Technology Resources state any resources for technology resources are
the Americans with accessible to every student.
(ADA)
Disabilities Act
There is a vague budget There is a specific There is a detailed budget with
Budget included in the budget included in the growth plans listing financial
technology plan. technology plan. options.
The technology plan The technology plan The technology plan explains
Ongoing Evaluation does not list population lists population growth population growth predictions
growth predictions. using models and model sources.
predictions/models.

nology%20Implementation%20Plan%20.pdf
Total Points: 15 /18
 Recommendations
After evaluating the Forsyth County School System’s Technology Plan, we believe that two of
the specified areas of our evaluation could be improved. In the Accessibility of Technology Resources
(ADA) section, the technology plan does not specifically include any resources for compliance. The
technology plan could have listed and explained resources for students with disabilities to access
technology. The second deficiency on the Forsyth County School System’s Technology Plan was in the
Budget section. In their plan, they failed to show a detailed growth plan. This information was found
elsewhere on their website, but was not found in their technology plan.