Concepts of Educational Technology Reflection

One of the very first courses completed in this program gave me the opportunity to analyze the technology that we have on our campus and compare it to where the state would like for us to be working to. Time was spent reviewing data from our campus's STaR Chart and the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology. Prior to this course, I had only known of the STaR Chart from completing it each spring and I was unaware that the data was used to profile the "campus' status toward reaching the goals of the Long Range Plan for Technology and No Child Left Behind" (TEA, 2006). Technology had always seemed a bit of a challenge for me to incorporate in my teaching, beyond presenting PowerPoint presenstations and using United Streaming for video usage. Students would have the opportunity to create their own PowerPoints and Word documents a few times each year, but the technology use had largely been focused on me. One thing I had believed for a long time was confirmed in the article "Using Flexible Technology to Meet the Needs of Diverse Learnes" by Lisa Wahl. "The diversity of learning needs in today's general education classroom continues to grow" (Wahl, 2005). Our students today do not perform as well with the traditional format of education - textbooks are often out of date before they even enter our rooms. Technology allows a means of differentiating instruction that meets the needs of most learners in one way or another.
By looking more closely at STaR Chart data, schools and districts can see if they are enabling teachers to better meet the needs of the diverse learner. As I reviewed my campus' STaR Chart data, I was very critical of the information presented and did not necessarily agree with the results. I did agree that in many of the areas analyzed, we were right where the data listed us, but in others I was not clear on the meaning of the score given. My campus has been very fortunate to have many technology options made available to us earlier than other campuses because of our Title I status and administrative grants awarded to our campus, however the staff doesn't utilize many of these options for a variety of reasons.
As a technology leader, I would want to look at the STaR Chart data from our campus as soon as it is released to see what areas I can work toward improving during the course of that school year. I would also be using the ISTE guidelines for reference as "the standards can assist technologists in reflecting on what they do" (Williamson and Redish, 2007). Each year is different and the needs of the staff will change to meet the needs of the students in their classrooms. My role as a leader is to be available to the staff as needs arise and help them to develop ways to better use the technology that we have access to and look into ways of getting additional technology to our campus to use.

References:
Texas Education Agency. (2006). Texas STaR Chart Campus Chart. Instructional Materials and Educational Technology Division, 1.

Wahl, L. (2005). Using Flexible Technology to Meet the Needs of Diverse Learners. WestEd, 2.

Williamson, J. and Redish, T. (2007, August). Building Technology Facilitators and Leaders. Learning and Leading with Technology, 25.