STaR Chart Summary

I decided to choose to focus on the four content area, Infrastructure for Technology. I picked this out of the four because our campus and district have made great strides towards our goal of Target Tech. The past few years, our community, district, staff, and students have shared a clear vision of technology and its' implentation inside and outside our classrooms.

Infrastructure for Technology is meant to connect schools to each other, to external resources, and to the Internet. This area asseses the need to integrate technology into the teaching and learning procees to deliver online learning activities and experiences to meet their individual needs as a life long learner. Infrastructure must support "promising practices in teaching and learning, professional development, school leadership, instructional mgt., and operations." (STaR pg. 5)

Comparing the past few years on the STaR chart assessment, we, as a campus and district, have made strides in this area. We have gone from a 14 to a 20, which is from Developing Tech almost to Target Tech. The progress and trends I see are in these three areas: classroom technology, technical support, and distance learning capacity. First, in the past few years our community has provided enough support to provide a Smart Board for over 90% of our classrooms. This is a tool to interact our classrooms with each other and classrooms around the world. We also have documents cameras in every room which takes the place of all our overhead projectors. With the area need of technology, we have also seen the increase in our technology professionals in our school. We have 2 on site technology professionals to assist anyone with problems with connectivity or any other tech problems. They can also come and teach when asked and bring in COWS, computers on wheels. This is an interactive tool to bring in computers for every student instead of going to the library. Lastly, we have a wireless campus that at any place in the school, one can connect to the internet. We have multiple servers and areas to provide distance learning. Teachers and students can use and interact with Moodle, Google, and our school websites away from the classroom. All assignments can be assessed from home. We also have site, Parent Viewer, that helps our parents oversee their sons/daughters grades and progress in all their courses.

The only recommendation I have falls in the Educator Preparation and Development area. With all this technology in place, we have to fast track our teachers to become more ready for this type of movement in education. More meaningful professional developments and time alloted to prepare and collaborate with colleagues and professionals has to be given to be successful.

With this infrastucture in place, technology provides benefits to our families and communities through improved communication and technology knowledge and skills of students, parents, and other community members. This will help us prepare our teachers and students for the fast paced technology in the 21st century.