The Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020- Educator Preparation and Development

Of all four areas of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, the one that I believe has the most impact of the rest, is the Educator Preparation and Development area. If we don’t have teachers equiped with the knowledge and skills necessary to fully integrate technology into instruction, all other areas become useless. What is the benefit of having hundreds of computers with the latest hardware and software at a campus, with all classrooms wired with LAN/WAN, if teachers don’t know how to take advantage of it?

The Educator Preparation and Development area is divided into 6 sections; Content of PD, Models of P.D., Capabilities of Educators, Access to P.D., Levels of Understanding and Patterns of Use, & P.D. for Online Learning. According to the Texas STaR Chart, our school scored overall at the Advance Tech stage in the 2008-2009 school year. However, I believe we are more at par with the state, at the Developing Tech stage. An overwhelming majority of the state’s schools, a 74.2% of the schools were at the Developing Tech stage in the 2007-08 year. Nearly 80% of Texas schools were at the Early or Developing Tech stage, up only 2 percentage points from the prior year. Our campus mirrors these same numbers.

Based on the Texas Campus and Teacher STaR Charts, in order to turn these trends around, we need to develop on-going professional development that focuses on providing tech application strategies for educators that will create learning environments where kids are empowered to think critically and where they have the means to collaborate with experts across business, industry and higher education. We also need to offer anytime, anywhere learning available through individually guided activities and inquiry action research, to name some. In order for teachers to be able to do this, we must also provide professional development that helps all teachers master the SBEC Technology Application Standards. They should also receive ongoing professional development training in order to create learning opportunities for all students and across all content areas.

It doesn’t matter how much administrative support or advance infrastructure we develop, incorporating technology in teaching and learning will not occur until teachers know how to do it.