Evaluation_BennettL

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Evaluation_BennettL, Summer 2012

Tech Times at Ridgemont High - Our DemographicsOur high school is part of a unit district which includes two high schools, five middle schools, fourteenelementary schools and one early learning center. Our high school has 236 certified staff members, andenrollment for the 2011-2012 school year was 2,917 including 704 freshmen, 712 sophomores, 756 juniors,716 seniors and 29 transition students. We are located in a suburb of Chicago, population 141,853. Theestimated median household income in the community is $98,488 (statewide average is $53,966).

1. Administrative FilterFocus is resource availability and the behaviors of Administrators and Staff.

Policy Behavioral: Islands. There are formal, published policies for how technology should be used by staff

and students.

Resource/Infrastructure: Integrated. Formal policies exist but it is unclear if they are promoted andmonitored equally throughout all 22 schools.

Planning Behavioral: Islands. Formal planning takes place but it is not uncommon for multiple projects to be

planned in isolation only to find the solutions are incompatible.

Resource/Infrastructure: Islands. Connections between projects is definitely a weak point. Forexample, it is rumored that our new LMS and current grade program may not be instantly compatible.

Budget Behavioral: Islands. There is a formal technology budget and allocation process but I was unable to

find any details on how the resources are allocated as they are or whether that comes from multiplesources.

Resource/Infrastructure: Islands. We operate within very defined budget silos and we are not allowedto reallocate funds. Example: to get seven desktop computers for my classroom I had to write anindependent grant even though at the end of that year we had money left in the department budgetfor supplies and capital.

Administrative Information Behavioral: Intelligent. All of our attendance, grade, email and referral systems are online with no

paper equivalent. We are actually fairly advanced as far as the technology to manage data, we justlack widespread technology to use for teaching.

Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent. Every member of the staff, students and parents have access tothe grading and email systems.

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2. Curricular FilterFocus is resource availability and the behaviors of Teachers and Students.

Electronic Information Behavioral: Islands. We depend on technology to handle the administrative end of teaching

(attendance, grades, email) but not for curriculum. There are still teachers using white boardsas their only content delivery methods.

Resource/Infrastructure: Islands-Integrated. Access to basic technology including shared drivesand high speed internet is available in every classroom.

Assessment Behavioral: Emergent. We are die-hard members of Scantron Nation! We are moving toward

collecting data in programs like Author which capture and categorize Scantron data, but aside fromlow-stakes quizzes using online programs like QUIA almost no assessment is done electronically.

Resource/Infrastructure: Emergent. Some content areas have special permission/funding for onlineassessment programs but that is not the norm and in all cases budgets only allow for a limitednumber of users.

Curriculum Integration Behavioral: Emergent-Island. At this point the use of technology to deliver curriculum is optional, and

somewhat limited. Some teachers classes are very dependent on technology while others use theSmartBoards just to project PowerPoints while students copy notes using pen and paper.

Resource/Infrastructure: Integrated. All classrooms have SmartBoards, laptop docks, and high speedinternet access. As far as I know the Fall 2012 pilot will be the first group of classes (outside ofcomputer classes) that requires students and teachers to use technology as the backbone of thelessons outside of the computer classes.

Teacher Use Behavioral: Islands-Integrated. Daily use yes, but primarily for administrative not curriculum. While a

majority of teachers turn on the SmartBoards and plug in their laptops daily, from a curriculumstandpoint the tools are still used more for projecting static presentations or showing video clips thanthey are for delivering dynamic or interactive lessons.

Resource/Infrastructure: Islands-Integrated. All teachers have access to basic technology in theirclassrooms, though most classrooms do not have classroom computers, In math/science, forexample, 40 teachers share five laptop carts (15 laptops per cart) so daily use is just not possible.

Student Use Behavioral: Islands. This depends largely on the content area. For example, students in computer

science use computers extensively and cannot meet outcomes without them. In other areas studentsmay never turn on a computer.

Resource/Infrastructure: Integrated-Intelligent. All students have access to basic technology in theLRC (library), Academic Center, Writing Center and in free-standing hallway kiosks.

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3. Support FilterFocus is resource availability and the behaviors of Teachers and Support Staff.

Stakeholder Involvement Behavioral: Emergent. There always seems to be a great deal of technology planning going on in

the background, yet few end users are brought in until final decisions have been made. Forexample, the district just picked an LMS for 22 schools based on small focus groups of a fewdozen users.

Resource/Infrastructure: Emergent. Few different groups are included in technology planningoutside the actual technology department specialists and a handful of teachers who have beenidentified as early adopters or tech savvy.

Administrative Support Behavioral: Emergent-Islands. District administrators are actively involved in technology planning

but individual building administrators do not seem to be heavily involved in the first stages of thetechnology use planning.

Resource/Infrastructure: Islands.Some formal administration time and support is allocated toplanning and implementation, though it seems to be more from district technology administratorsthan individual building administrators.

Training Behavioral: Integrated-Intelligend. In the case of school-wide, mandated technology (new grading

program, new email system, etc.) all staff members participate in ongoing technology trainingprovided by site and district personnel.

Resource/Infrastructure: Islands-Integrated: In the case of curricular support technology(SmartBoards, cameras, software) training is usually provided on a one-day basis at institute daysor in optional professional development classes after school or during the summer.

Technical and Infrastructure Support

Behavioral: Integrated. Most staff take advantage of formal and informal support for the requiredtechnology (LMS, grade program) and classroom technology (A/V equipment, SmartBoards,

laptop interface to projectors, classroom computers, etc).

Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent. We are lucky in that each department has a dedicated TIC(technology integration specialist), who has release time (teaches one fewer class) in order toassist us with technology needs.

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4. Connectivity FilterConnectivity impacts all segments of the institution.

Local Area Networking Behavioral: Integrated. Welcome to our own personal digital inequality. I truly believe our district

has and puts considerable effort into maintaining a robust, current backbone for our technologyneeds. It is the user layer that fails to take advantage of it, either because they are not aware ofwhat is available or they are still more comfortable doing things as they have always done them.

Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent. Our Local Area Network features a redundant layer 3 core withdual homed switched IDFs. Most locations follow this model and have multiple distributionfacilities, though smaller buildings need only a single distribution facility.

District Area Networking Behavioral: Integrated. Much like usage of our LAN, I think any missed opportunities in utilizing the

district network are more cultural than technological. We all store files on the shared drives, butfew teachers take advantage of all available features.

Resource/Infrastructure: Integrated. The districts 22 schools and the Administrative Center areconnected via a meshed gigabit fiber network. All staff have access to the network drives from alllocations.

Internet Access Behavioral: Islands. Two words: email and YouTube. Those seem to be the primary uses of the

internet (outside our required administrative tasks). Since in-class computers and computer labsare limited, I still see internet use among teachers largely as a means to deliver content, not somuch to directly engage students. When student computers are available they are mostly used forWebQuests and project research.

Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent. We have wide-spread, well supported internet access bothwired and wireless throughout all buildings.

Communication Systems Behavioral: Intelligent. Our district relies very heavily on email for dissemination of district

information, idea and file sharing, and communication between teachers, between teachers and

parents, and between teachers and students.

Resource/Infrastructure: Intelligent. All teachers and students have dedicated school emails,though my experience has been that students rarely check their school emails unless instructed todo so.

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5. Innovation FilterFocus in this area impacts teachers and students the most.

New Technologies Behavioral: Islands. Problems with integrating new technologies into our curriculum is two-fold.

First there is a significant population of teachers who resist change, especially because we tend tochange technology so frequently (the brand new digital projector installed they installed in myroom last September is being replaced this year with a wireless one). Second, because our district

tends to purchase test quantities of new technology, there is often a hoarding phase during whichopportunities to experiment with new technology is limited to who gets their first. Teachers havebeen known to hide laptop carts, probes, clickers, and cameras in their classrooms and bypass thesign out procedures, one can only assume operating on the idea that it is easier to ask forgivenessthan permission.

Resource/Infrastructure: Islands. We also suffer, as a group, from the play with it and drop itsyndrome because trying new technology and building new lessons to truly utilize it are twodifferent things. When the department first bought three sets of Senteo clickers people were liningup at the door to use them. Now, just a few years later, they largely sit and gather dust.

Comprehensive Technologies Behavioral: Integrated. We have technology beyond A/V and scanners, including digital cameras,

tablets, data gathering probes, and SmartBoards, but they are often underutilized except inadvanced classes. In the science department only the physics curriculum truly and consistentlyintegrates technology using probes and data gathering software.

Resource/Infrastructure. Islands-Integrated. The majority of the school falls into Islands in thatone or two types of technology (laptops and Flipcams) enjoy widespread use. A few groups haveadvanced to Integrated. For example math has truly integrated their SmartBoards to createinteractive lessons, physics relies heavily on probes and graphing software, and a few teachersschoolwide are creating Podcasts to try the flipped classroom model.

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SummaryIslands in the digital stream, that it what we are. I believe on paper (and on the ten-page TechnologyDepartment website) our district sees itself as Integrated at the very least and probably hopes in mostareas that we have matured to become technologically Intelligent. But paper isnt people and there are anumber of disconnects that in my opinion keep us on the Islands.

Awareness. I have been with the district six years and this is the first time I knew we had aTechnology Department website. I believe we have a great infrastructure that would support more

technology use, but little beyond what we need to do the administrative part of our jobs is activelypromoted.

Release Time: Learning the basics of new technology, let alone learning to use it effectively, takestime and little is given to teachers to explore new technology options. At best we have a few shortworkshops on institute days, at worst we are challenged to learn it on our own.

Resources: When 40 math and science teachers share five computer carts (15 laptops each) andmost classrooms lack in-class computers, it is difficult to plan to integrate technology on a dailybasis. Scheduling conflicts become a big enough issue that some teachers avoid using thetechnology altogether.

Resistance to Change . We still have one teacher in our Math-Science department who physicallycuts and pastes together his worksheets and exams from old Xerox copies. Other teachers mournthe switch from chalkboards to whiteboards (never mind SmartBoards) and many teachers stillkeep paper grade books. Two years ago when one of our Geology teachers retired part of hisgoing away present was the acetate roll for his overhead projector. He never accepted technologyfor much more than email and attendance.

Sibling Rivalry . We have 22 schools in our district and all technology plans are not created equal.For example, I understand two of the middle schools have had iPads for years and our sister highschool has twice the number of laptops we do. And so it goes. Our own little digital divide.

Overall I think we have a great infrastructure, appropriate administrative support, and a changing cultureamong staff, so with any luck (and a little more promotion and training) well get voted off the Islands in notime.

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