Action Plan

Professional Development planning is the key to implementing a successful technology action plan for a school. The Technology Director with the help of the Principal must come up with effective strategies for implementing their plan, so that the teachers can integrate technology in the classroom. The Technology director can use the campus STaR Chart to look where improvements can be made. Using this information, the Campus Technology Director can then set up professional development that is useful for the staff. Another way to learn about technology needs of the school is to set up meetings with the heads of each department and ask them what each classroom needs and what kinds of trainings would be beneficial for the teachers in their departments.
Some professional development trainings that could help teachers is the use of blogs in their classrooms. Teachers could have students set up blogs so they could share information with each other and the teacher. Another useful training would be for the use of podcasts. This would allow teachers to communicate with other teachers for lesson plans and ideas in their classroom. These methods can help to improve gathering and analysis of data from a variety of sources. Also, administrators need training to improve their ability to integrate technology instruction. This training would have to be set up by the Technology Director based upon the action plan that was approve by the Superintendent and Principal.

A technology action plan has to be evaluated to ensure its success. This evaluation should be monitored by the technology director at each campus and their findings should be presented to the Campus Principal. Talking to our campus technology director, I gained insight to the various forms of evaluation she uses to provide data for campus technology improvement.
One method she uses for evaluation is of course the STaR Chart. With the STaR Chart the technology director can evaluate the needs of the campus and what kinds of training the staff needs in order to teach with technology successfully in the classroom. The technology director must also follow the campus and district improvement plans that have been made by the District Improvement Committee. Using these plans will lay the framework of the technological needs of the district and each campus.
Professional development is measured by feedback from teachers. This feedback includes both an evaluation of the training itself and feedback from teachers on what types of trainings would be beneficial for the entire school. The technology director meets with the head of each department to make sure that technology needs are being met in the classroom, and also to introduce new forms of technology that can be used in the classroom. The head of each department can then request trainings for their department.