Week 4: Professional Development Action Plan

After reviewing the Campus Improvement Plan, District Instructional Improvement Council (DIIC) Plan, Campus Instructional Improvement Council (CIIC) Plan, Clear Creek ISD Long-Range Plan for Technology, STaR Chart, AEIS report, and Net Day's Speak up Event Data, the technology area Clear Lake High School needs to address is Educator Preparation and Development. This is also the area that the Technology Integration Specialist (TIS) and the Dean of Instruction noted was an area that needs continued improvement. There is also a need to increase the infrastructure and the equipment at this campus.

The Campus STaR Chart showed consistent scores across all years in educator preparation and development. In most recent years professional development experiences increased. 60% of staff met SBEC Technology standards, and 29% of the technology budget is used for professional development. The level of understanding and use, however, decreased from 2008 to 2009.

Our lowest scoring areas within the Advanced Tech classifications were Online Learning, and Professional development for Online Learning. In previous years, there have been no online learning opportunities available for teachers. Some have opened up this year, but this is a first for this district. Another area of weakness was found in Classroom Technology and Technical Support in the Infrastructure classification. As there is an increase in the number of teachers using technology, there is an increased need for support to help with problems that occur with the hardware. Also, when there are more teachers learning to use the technology, the equipment must be available. There is not enough equipment for every teacher in the building to use. There are various sources for data that can be used by teachers. Professional development should be provided to make teachers aware of these sources.

Teachers should be trained on Laser Focus On-Line Student Documentation and TEAMS management systems. Many new teachers are not even aware of these sources. These trainings will enable teachers more efficiently to document student progress as well as provide on-going evaluations of students for SST referrals. This will enable follow through on students on a year to year basis which will benefit teachers, students, parents, and administrators.

Teachers should be provided training to use Dashboard, which has a wealth of data on students' scores from district and state assessments. Teachers should also be trained in data desegregation.

Professional development should have upside down mentoring where new teachers who are proficient with technology are paired with veteran teachers who are not so comfortable in integrating technology and provided time to collaborate.

E4 (Blackboard) training is needed and teachers at our campus are at various levels. Training should not be one size fits all. Teachers should be allowed to learn at their own pace on Web 2 .0 tools.

The Professional Development activities that that will achieve the action plan of integrating technology with instructional and organizational leadership include the following:

Part I: Identifying Technology Needs:

Have the teachers complete pre-assessment as a survey, done before the day of the professional development, about technology on campus, including: what are current needs, what is the district long range plan on technology, do you know where to find the district long range plan, what sort of data is available on the AEIS report, how can this data be used to help your classes, what do you anticipate future technology needs being, and what professional development in regards to integrating technology do you need to better serve our students? This pre-assessment is to understand better teachers' knowledge levels of technology needs for the CLHS campus.

On the day of the professional development, have teachers divide up by department. Provide STAR chart, Long Range Plan (LRP), CIP, DIP, Speak Up challenge data for the teachers. In content departments, discuss what each of these documents can do for the teachers in integrating technology and creating professional development to aide them. Discuss for 15 minutes in departments. List on chart paper the important points gathered.

Ask the smaller groups to rejoin the large group. Using technology such as data projector and either live links to the District Long Range Plan (LRP) or a PowerPoint presentation show the most important areas of the LRP. Take the CIP and compare it with the district Long Range Plan. Ask the departments to brainstorm ideas to incorporate technology into their content areas. Have each department write these down in a pre-created wiki. Share these ideas with the larger group, through posting findings on campus discussion board, divided into content areas.

Part II: Take the data and change the CIP to reflect these needs:

The entire CIIC meets to evaluate discussion board findings, and restructure the CIP to reflect the actual campus instructional technology needs.

Divide CIIC members into collaborative groups, to include parents, students, and district level members. The CIP will be divided into objectives; each group to take two objectives on current CIP, and incorporate as many new instructional technology needs assessed from the discussion boards as possible. The CIIC will approve the new and improved CIP.

To evaluate the professional development activities outlined, the CIIC members will share the new CIP with each content department to ensure incorporation of their departments' specific technology needs. Each department will turn in to the Administration three written goals of how technology will be integrated into the content areas.

In order to evaluate that technology is integrated and campus based decision making is occurring, the professional development team will access elements of the pre-assessment, the data gathered at the professional development, the wiki, and the discussion board in order to evaluate the success and needs of professional development. The use of the assessments follows:

Use the data from the pre-assessment to monitor where technology needs are perceived vs. where technology needs are not being met vs. where technology needs are actually. Use this information to establish a knowledge level.

CIIC will compare prior years' STaR charts and NetDay data to see if there is an increased student and teacher perception of integration of technology.

The discussion board will be monitored by the presenters for evaluation/gathering of information about areas of technology integration and instruction where the campus is lacking and what teachers perceive their needs to be.

Administrators and dept heads will evaluate the success of the three goals through classroom observations and lesson plans.

Other data used for these professional development activities include:

• STaR Chart Survey reports
  
• Net Day's Speak up Event data.
  
• Ongoing informal interviews conducted by campus technology specialists and campus technicians.
  
• Feedback from monthly campus technology specialist and campus technician meetings.
  
• Records of participation in technology professional development, including, but not limited to, sign-in sheets, records of time.
  
• Online/completion for online training, and certificates of completion for out of district training.
  
• Workshop evaluations for all district and campus training conducted by Instructional Technology staff, which include sections for participants to indicate topics they would like to see covered in the future.
  
• Monitoring and documentation of technology proficiencies for all staff.
  
• Number of staff completed with each of the four levels in the Technology Staff Development Plan (TSDP)
  
• Updated curriculum documents that include the Technology Applications TEKS and technology integration resources.