The document outlines the roles and responsibilities of different individuals involved in technology at Allen High School, including the superintendent, assistant superintendent, district technology officer, high school principal, technology supervisor, campus improvement team members, classroom teachers, and technology liaison. It then discusses the need to analyze professional development to better utilize student technology expertise and bring the district into the 21st century. A plan is proposed to survey students, train teachers, and certify teachers in software to evaluate the success of professional development.

1. Technology SummaryAllen High School2009 – 2010Each Campus has several of each of these individuals in different roles and responsibilities, complete list below at the link. Roles and ResponsibilitiesSuperintendentHe or she is the visionary. This person is the face of the district when it comes to changes in technology or any other specialty. May not have much day to day responsibility from the perspective of identifying technology, but does need to be kept informed of all decisions that are being made.Assistant SuperintendentTechnology will be under this person and this particular individual will have a more active role in helping the District technology offices identify, test, budget for, and implement new programs and systems. The reason I have the two superintendents off to the side, is that they play an upper level role, and may not always be involved day to day.District technology OfficerThis individual is tasked with the strategy, design, and implementation of all new technology that will hit the district. It is this person’s responsibility to keep his finger on the pulse of the teachers in the district to determine what they need in conjunction to the students needs and curriculum.High School PrincipalThis is the on-site visionary and liaison between the teachers and the district. It is up to this individual to work with the district on the technology plans for future, as well as, share that vision with the staff. Certain things must be done by this person, which include, surveying staff, creating a campus technology team, communicate the information back to the district technology director, and finally, support the plan and help relieve the staff of any anxiety towards the new vision.Technology SupervisorThis person is where the rubber meets the road. This will be your hands on campus technician. He or she will help with implementation, training, support, troubleshooting, and daily assistance. This person is important because he will be the first line of defense when it comes to teacher’s issues and complaints. It will be his responsibility to calm them, reassure them about the technology they are using, and finally, report back on the progress of the implementation.Campus Improvement Team MembersThese individuals work with the principal to be the eyes and ears of the campus. Their role will be to survey teachers on their classroom needs, accumulate the information, and report back to the principal and district technology director. These individuals are important because they are trusted by the faculty and can get the real information and issues that the teachers are having.Classroom TeachersTheir job may appear to be the easiest, but in actuality, it is very difficult. Their job is to assist technology with legitimate request, test new technology to ensure that what is there is useful in a classroom settingTechnology LiaisonThis person is a crossover… It is a teacher on campus that has enough technology in their background to step in when the campus technology person is out. They are there as a backup, and they are trusted by the staff because they are one of them… They primary responsibility is technology support.Additionally, the following link gives specifics to additional personell, within our district, that assist with all types of technology needs.http://www.allenisd.org/20061061016141977/site/default.aspAs the principal, it is primarily up to him or her to really be the fulcrum of this organizational setup. Meaning that the principal is really the only crossover between administration and the campus. So from that perspective, the principals job is to understand the districts objective when it comes to technology, then work directly with the Campus Technology Director to not only get the implmentation plan completed, but then to express the view and objective of the plan to the staff on campus. So the principal must incoporate the follosing disciplines; 1) technology understanding, 2) vision, 3) articulation when it comes to the staff, and finally 4) confidence and trust in the plan and his ability to persued the faculty to buy into the solution. It is not an easy task, but one that is critical to the success of any technology implementation.Professional Development Analysis and ReviewThis one, for me and my situation at my school, will be easy to write up. The analysis of my district over the past few months regarding our technology and where we stand really boils down to one question; How do we bring ourselves into the 21st century, and more importantly, how do we utilize the technology that our students are already experts in using? This issue we are facing seems like an easy issue to solve, but there are going to be hardships along the way and we need to get started now.Step 1 – We need to up the analysis we are doing within our district, but we need to focus on the students and what they can bring to the table. A lot of our district discussion has been regarding our capabilities and what we can achieve and support. But at this point, we need to be talking to our students about what capabilities they have and what would be the best way to integrate technology into the curriculum that will motivate them the best. So the analysis and data gathering needs to be the following if we want to truly capture all of the capabilities that we can achieve.First – We need to continue with the on-line evaluations to our teachers to keep our finger on the pulse of what the teachers will need in order to upgrade the curriculum using the technology we have in place.Second – We need to develop pockets of students groups in order to evaluate and survey them as to what they use, what they are good at, and what they would like to see moving forward.Third – This information needs to be reviewed and discussed by our district technology team, as well as, any outside entity that will be involved in any implementation that will be done within our schools. This is important, because as we discuss ideas that we would like to use, we need to make sure that all of it is supported and possible moving forward with implementation.So once that is done, and we decide to move forward with some sort of implementation plan, professional development is going to be the key. In most cases, as technology advances, our teachers are falling further behind. So educating them will be the key. Here is my plan for that.First – A series of hands on learning classes for the teachers in each of the areas needed to get a novice comfort level with the new systems.Second – A summer time training class that will take them from novice to intermediate as a user in order for them to take their learning and teaching to the next level.Third – Multiple (optional) follow ups when certain questions come up throughout the school year. (Advanced capabilities of the system, technical questions, etc.)Fourth – I would also include in the training sessions, a group of students that would act as liaisons between the faculty and the student body. We could utilize these students in our classrooms as trainers and they could, in turn, help us to become more proficient using the technology that they are most likely already very good at.We need to begin a partnership with our students. Old ways of teaching will not work in the new technology world… We must start thinking ahead and making changes. In addition, having a much more stream lined training program for teachers will also assist our administrative teams with helping share the vision of the district moving forward. It is my belief that the more someone knows about a topic or subject, the more comfortable we feel about it. How many times have we been afraid of something that we know nothing about? We need to educate our staff, but not half way, if we commit to something, we need to dive in and fully get our individuals up to speed so they can be successful with their students.Evaluation PlanningMy idea of providing measurable outcomes really falls into several levels; State, District, school, and individual. It reviewing our district technology plan and our STaR chart from last year, we have a few identified areas of necessary improvement, as well as, identified upgrade areas pertaining to our technology. In order to effectively determine if we are seeing results from these professional development activities, we must look at specific results oriented activities that can actually show us success rates.So here is what I am proposing… Above, I talked about several ways to offer professional development to our staff. In the case of software application, most companies offer several different levels of certification in regard to their software. This would be one easy way to determine success; in that we can have our teachers obtain these certification levels during their initial and follow up trainings. This will give us hard data as to how many have obtained this, as well as, a mastery level of the software. This will also help us understand who need additional training and support moving forward with additional implementations. So by doing this, we are not only able to monitor our staff’s progress, we are getting back hard core data as to how our professional development is working for the teachers, and ultimately going to work in the classroom.This will also offer us the ability to improve and enhance our implementation and our professional development. As our teachers are working through their staff instruction, they will also be able to work with the software company in making adjustments to the software that will allow it to be more user friendly to our district and our teachers. Additionally, it will help us as a district to be able to make better decisions in the future, as it pertains to new leaders, new programs to look at for curriculum enrichment, and finally it helps bridge the gap between administration and teachers in getting the message and vision down to them.