(Naperville) Emily Skirtich

Created By Emily Skirtich

Emily Rose Skirtich

Wiki Plan GILT514

Clayton County Public School District

It is the mission of the Clayton County Public School District to "provide

flexible and responsive direction for access to information systems,
instructional technology, and technology services to enhance student
achievement for all students." The district also pledges a strong commitment
to providing adequate hardware and software for their schools. The plan is to
be carried out over the course of three years and promises to deliver the
technologies laid out in the plan in a timely matter, within the district's budget,
and with quality services that support student academic success for all
students.

One of the main strengths of this plan is that it lays out an effective means to
asses the current reality of the quality of technology across the district. The
plan uses eight data sources to plan and implement technology within the
district. The eight sources include:

1. State Technology Inventory

2. 8th Grade Technology Literacy Assessment
3. Training Surveys for 21st Century Digital Classroom Professional
4. Locally Developed Pre and
5. Laptop Training and Ed Jobs Survey

6. Internal Human Resources Desk Audit and Job Analysis

7. Annual Technology Budget
8. Gap Analysis Report

These eight sources provide an honest and effective way to asses what
shortcomings lie within the district. Once shortcomings can be determined the
district can then work in a timely manner, and within their budget to fix the
areas they deem unfit. One problem I could detect in reading their plan
however was that the district seems to operate on a tight budget. This could
hinder the progress of the district's three year plan. While budget concerns
are undoubtedly an inevitable problem within any school district the fact that
the budget was mentioned so many times was a bit alarming for me.

Terms:

State Technology Inventory: Georgia's inventory of all the technology utilized

in its various school districts
Gap analysis report: conclusions of strengths and weaknesses of current
specifications and standards

Naperville Community Unit School District 203 (Emily Skirtich)

In order to research the technology plan of the Naperville Community Unit School
District I was required to view a short video that introduced and outlined the plan. The
video was concise and was an interactive and fun way to learn about the plan. The video
was presented by Naperville School District CIO, Roger Brunelle. This made my learning
experience all the more personal as I was able to put a face to a name. The video was
concise and perhaps too brief. It first outlined the district's supported technologies which
include smartboards, laptops/tablets/netbooks, iPads, MP3 players, flip cams, document
cameras, kindles, and smart response. I was impressed by the wide array of supported
technologies and I believe that this is one extremely positive aspect of the plan.

The video then goes on to state the district's technology mission. The mission reads,
"Our mission is to educate students to be self-directed learners, collaborative workers,
complex thinkers, quality producers and community contributors by providing world
class innovative technologies and stellar service in an effective and efficient manner."
The disctict backs up their claim of providing world class innovative technologies in that
their list of supported technologies they boast is impressive. However, I was not
completely sold that they way in which they utilize that technology is in fact
accomplishing what they preach in their mission.
As I dug deep into the district's plan I discovered that one of the main strengths of the
plan is their instructional technology department. The disctict utilizes Technology
Integration Specialists, who are certified teachers, that are responsible for instructing
their fellow teachers on how to introduce and utilize the above technology into their
lesson plans. This asepct of the plan was a major positive for me because it is imperative
that trained speciliasts are instructing teachers exactly how to use any kind of
technology instead of forcing teachers to simply figure it out on their own.
While on the whole, the district's technology plan is fairly solid, one of the biggest
negatives of the plan is that it does not explicity state how they use the technology they
claim to provide to their students. For me, concise details should be included in a plan in
order to explain how each piece of technology is being used. The plan did not outline
how this "world class technology" is being used in classrooms and I would have liked to
learn exactly what they are doing with all those iPads and Kindles.

Terms:
smart response: enables teachers to instantly asses learning through formative and
summative assessments - increasing sudent participation and improving learning
outcomes (http://smarttech.com/response)
Technology Integration Specialist: promotes the use of technoogies to support student
achievement in the preK-12 classrom