Technology Evaluation Plan Administration of Technology Resources Cynthia Campbell, Terry Gough, Aaron Parker Georgia Southern University

April 1, 2013

TECHNOLOGY PLAN RUBRIC

by Cynthia Campbell, Timothy Gough, and Aaron Parker

CRITERIA Goals and Strategies for Using Telecommun ications and Information Technology

1 Learning goals are not clear or are absent. Goals address equipment only. Means of achieving goals are not articulated or are unrealistic.

2 Goals are broad and comprehensive but may not be completely clear. The strategies are derived from the goals, but the steps to achieve them may be too vague or not measurable. Benchmarks for goal attainment or evaluation methods are absent or too vague. Staff development is mentioned, but is not clearly articulated as to how it will be accomplished, or evaluated. Provides an imprecise overview of needs. Describes some strategies and recommendations.

3 Goals are concise, comprehensive, attainable, and measurable. They include strategies derived from the goals that outline the steps needed to achieve the goals and they are clearly stated. Goals cover equipment and instructional needs. Benchmarks are defined and evaluation specifications are stated. Staff development is addressed succinctly and completely. Current needs are outlined and a variety of strategies for attaining the skill level required to accomplish instructional goals are clearly enumerated. Resources that exist and resources that will be established are stated and are clearly suited to the task they will serve to accomplish Needs assessment is comprehensive and contains detailed information regarding hardware resources, staff development needs, and surveys. Equipment inventory is detailed and comprehensive.

A Staff development plan is Professional absent or mentioned only in Development terms of who will deliver it. Strategy No outlined plan of exact needs or means of delivery.

Assessment of Telecommun ication Services, Hardware, Software, and Other Services Needed Budget Resources

Needs Assessment is absent or vague. Broad statements are made about the needs of the school. No inventory of equipment is provided.

Technology has been assessed and analyzed, but may not include summaries of information from all elements in the technology surveys. Equipment inventory is not comprehensive.

Funding resources are not mentioned or are vague and meaningless. Few specific figures are described. No timeline is provided.

Provides most, but not all, of the project, timelines, and budget estimate information. Appears to be generally consistent with plan goals An evaluation process and instrument is described in detail, but lacks complete comprehensiveness. The link to goals and objectives is not apparent.

Ongoing evaluation process

No formal evaluation is described.

Current and future funding sources are specified. A prioritized list of major tech plan projects, tasks and timelines is included. Budgetary summary estimates of capital expenses is provided. Identifies possible alternative funding resources. An evaluation process and instrument are described in detail, and is comprehensive in nature. Assessment is timely, and tied to the objectives.

Introductory Paragraph:

We are evaluating Effingham Countys technology plan. Effingham Countys 2009-2012 Technology Plan was rewritten in early 2012 by a group of technology specialists and county administrators. A new 2012-2015 plan was constructed and revised in May of 2012 by a group of technology specialists, teachers, county administrators, and parents. To the best of my knowledge, Effingham Countys technology plan is followed, in what I would call an average to close range. However, all the plan goals are, to my knowledge, honest and accurate as to what is being implemented, what is ongoing, and what is being reassessed. The plan itself seems to be a little choppy and lacks cohesiveness.

Goals and Realistic Strategy for Using Telecommunications and Information Technology.

The Effingham County Technology Plan was awarded a score of two out of three possible on the rubric for its development of Goals and Realistic Strategy for Using Telecommunications and Information Technology. Six goals are included in the Plan with strategies for accomplishing those goals. Benchmarks are included to monitor the progress and a method of evaluating the strategies is included. The goals also designate the person or persons responsible for the execution of the strategies and the funding means and sources. All in all, the six goals that are included cover the equipment and instructional needs of the county, and many of the strategies, benchmarks and evaluations are specific and clear, but several are too general or simplistic or unrealistic. For example, one strategy for the goal of providing multiple means of communication between schools and home is to provide Auto Dialer Service to communicate with parents and the evaluation of that strategy states only that the service will be used to communicate with parents. A different strategy for that same goal states that web sites will be provided for schools and teachers and the evaluation piece for that is that schools and teachers will have web pages. Not only is that evaluation simplistic, it might also be a bit unrealistic to state that all teacher in the county will have web pages especially considering that in the Professional Development section of the plan it states that the webmaster provides training for teacher web pages as requested by teachers, and not that it is a mandatory training for all. Benchmark measurability varies greatly from strategy to strategy. Under the goal of utilizing technology more efficiently to instruct students one clearly stated benchmark indicates that

weekly training session will be offered on Thursdays every week that school is in session. Another benchmark addressing that same goal states only that Instructional Specialists will respond to requests for training, not addressing how those requests are to be made or even what it means to respond to requests. One goal is presented as Increase interactive technologies within classrooms to enhance student achievement. This goal is vague, difficult to measure and the strategies that mention the installment of and training on 21st Century Classroom enhancements do not add much clarity to the meaning. Assuming that the intent is most likely that 21st Century technologies will increase student achievement, this goal could have been better stated as, 21st Century Technologies will be installed and teachers will be trained in their use with the purpose of utilizing them to enrich instruction to achieve learning goals. Then the specific technologies could be outlined in the strategies for that goal. The strategies in the Effingham plan do mention specific technologies that they would like to include. The benchmark for this strategy is stated as New equipment is provided within budgetary constraints. Although it is understood that budgetary constraints are ubiquitous these days, the benchmark is rather meaningless. Throughout the section that outlines the goals of the technology plan there is a stated person or persons responsible for each particular strategy. Of the twenty-five separate strategies, the Information Technology Coordinator is named as the person responsible on nineteen of them, the Information Technology Specialists are named on eight, a Network Administrator is named on five, a Network Specialist is named on three, a Web Site Specialist is named on two, and the Assistant Superintendent, Teachers, and Building Technology Team are each named on one. This appears to describe an inequitable distribution of responsibility and accountability to get this plan accomplished. Teachers in particular are notably absent from responsibility in the goals that address student achievement and the utilization of resources to instruct students more efficiently. Overall the goals cover the general equipment and instructional needs of the county and the strategies are in line with the goals. The plan would benefit from a basic rewording of several of the goals, strategies, and benchmarks in order to enhance then and to make them more clear and measureable. It is not possible to comment on the funding section of the goals plan, but the section that addresses who is responsible for each

strategy could be improved upon by adding more people to be ultimately responsible for the success of the goals and objectives of the plan. Ideally, students would also be included, especially in the section that addresses their instruction. These adjustments could be made without compromising or changing much of the stated intent of each entry. The table format that the plan utilizes in its goals and strategies section is well organized and easy to read. Professional development strategy

The professional development strategy for the Effingham County Technology Plan scored a two out of a possible three on the rubric created for this evaluation process. A short section entitled Professional Development outlines the plan in less than 300 words and consists mostly of generalized statements regarding practices that are currently in place. The plan acknowledges that technology is an area in which high quality professional development is essential and yet provides no focused step by step plan to accomplish it. It does list the ways that they feel that they have addressed this need in the hiring of an Instructional Technology Specialist, a hosted web application training (as requested,) and an online learning environment in which staff can investigate professional development opportunities independently. But the specific technologies are vague as in 21st Century Classroom and Renaissance Learning. Although the term 21st Century Classroom is ubiquitous these days and can be useful in describing a general idea of current technology, it does not give a clear picture of what exactly the classroom will include. Additionally, the term Renaissance Learning references a company that deals with several products; hardware, software and web-based, and the mere mention of the product brand does nothing to inform the reader what will be accomplished from its inclusion in the plan. In the section of the technology plan that references the goals there are four mentions of staff development as part of the strategies to fulfill the goal, but the wording is vague and says that training will be done as requested or as needed. In the Needs Assessment section of the plan in which individual schools submitted an action plan created by their respective School Improvement Teams that listed a series of actions that were to be accomplished at their sites to improve test scores on the high stakes testing such as the CRCT and the EOCT and the GHSGT- staff development is barely referred to and then usually only in the form of the

name of a staff member who will be charged with it. With something as important as professional development, a plan that clearly maps out a path for continued skills acquisition in order to better utilize technology to positively impact student learning is critical. The Effingham County Technology Plan is in need of a plan that would carefully enumerate the training required to meet what they have set as their students' learning goals. It would also benefit the technology plan in general to have a more consistent idea about staff development throughout its pages. Assessment of telecommunication services, hardware, software, and other services needed

The Effingham County Technology plan was given a score of 2 out of a possible 3 points on the rubric for the assessment of telecommunication services, hardware, software, and other services needed. The Executive Summary of the plan gives the reader a sense of direction by detailing eight categories of concentration and in what order they will be addressed by the school district. Included and explained in the summary are; access to technology, technology use of teachers, student technology use, system readiness which includes faculty, staff and administration training in technology use, system support, administrative technology, parent and community involvement, and finally technology integration. The access to technology category briefly details a later and more detailed explanation of the districts movement to increase the number of modern computers and other hardware, as well as to increase the amount of instructional classrooms which are web accessible. An increase in student involvement in technology is thought to be obtained through the modeling of technology use by the systems teachers and this is briefly covered in the technology use by the teachers category. Student technology use is addressed in the plan by stating that technology will be used as a learning tool and will be integrated into the curriculum. The plan states in the system support portion that school personnel need to feel confident in technology and that it will be fixed in the event of its eventual breakdown. Although stated that the systems technology will be repaired, no specific information was given with regards to funding for this. The importance of parent and community involvement and in keeping both informed was taken into consideration and addressed by the use of school and district web pages, phone systems with voice-mail, as well as email and other mechanisms to enhance information.

The technology plan does give an extensive and comprehensive equipment inventory however, though overall informative, the technology plan does present some specificity issues due to its vagueness in many of the aforementioned categories as well as in presenting detailed information about surveys, and in technology training received and desired. Improvements could be made by simply being more specific in these categories as well as detail as to how funds for stated improvements will be procured. Budget resources

The budget resources section of the Effingham County Technology Plan barely scored a one on the rubric included in this evaluation. Funding sources are mentioned, but they are vague and limited to general funding sources with no specific plan or exact figures for any purchases. In fact, there is no specific section dedicated to the funding and budget resources, but only mention made in the Goals and Benchmarks section of the plan. In the Goals and Benchmarks section funding examples include; Title IIA, Title I, General Fund, Professional Learning Funds, and SPLOST. Attached to these funding sources are either no figures, or very generalized figures of all the funds that the county expects to receive from those sources. There are no project plans with specific monetary figures aimed toward any purchase. Some of the funding source citations are coupled with caveats such as; as available, contingent upon approval, and to be determined. Due to a near complete lack of any budgetary resource information available in this plan, it scored the lowest of all scores on the rubric. The technology plan needs to be fleshed out in the form of specific project plans with timelines and detailed budgetary expenses outlined. Ongoing evaluation process

The Effingham County Technology Plan was awarded a score of two out of three possible on the rubric for its ongoing evaluation process. The only reason for us giving this plan a two out of three is that it seems to only be evaluated every two or three years. If this plan were to appear to be evaluated yearly then it would have easily been given a three out of three. All of the goals strategies and benchmarks were honestly evaluated and reviewed. We found that most of the three year goals were either implemented and ongoing or completed. Some goals, such as student internet accounts and I-Safe trainings, were to be reassessed or have been slightly

neglected. Improvements could be made in the area of evaluating the plan annually or maybe even bi-annually and better attention to the training of employees and students on the safe use of internet. Another reason for the less than perfect score is due to the fact that there is not a clearly delineated section that focuses on the evaluation. Nor were there any evaluation instruments describe anywhere in the plan. There is also no direct link to any type of evaluation in the contents.

Summary Paragraph

After a thorough review of Effingham Countys Technology Plan, we have come to the conclusion that it seems to have been broken up into numerous small portions and then pieced together to make one single plan. The reason for this thought is that the plan lacks cohesiveness; it just does not seem to flow from one section to the next and tends to contradict itself from section to section. However, it does seem to be accurate to what the county is doing from year to year. There are several distinctly good ideas within the plan for implementation of technology that will assist in reaching the goals that the county has set for itself. One of those unique ideas about Effingham Countys Technology Plan is the plan to give all high school students their own email address, for school use only, to help with after school communication with students and teachers. In the eyes of our group, this is a positive step in the direction of preparation for post-secondary education. So, although there are several commendable ideas for technology integration, overall the plan could be vastly improved by adding more specific details to add clarity, giving some components of the plan separate sections within the plan instead of including them in with others, evaluating the plan more frequently, and finally, creating a better sense of continuity within the plan so that it stands as one cohesive document.