At McAllen ISD we have 4 main goals that are being addressed through the District Technology Plan. Our first goal is to “focus on the instructional needs of teachers and the learning needs of students in meeting the vision of technology in education”. To meet this goal, there are many objectives, one of which includes encouraging 100% of the Instructional Staff to meet SBEC Technology Applications standards for educators as well as the TSSA Technology Standards for School Administrators. This objective is to be supported using strategies that include developing an assessment plan for evaluating teachers and administrators and providing training to staff members about the Technology Application Standards.
A second goal of the District Technology Plan is to train educators in teaching and learning by providing equitable professional development. One strategy they intend to use is to require campus as well as central office administrators to go to professional development sessions that discuss integration of technology into teaching and learning.
The third main goal of the MISD District Technology Plan is integrating technology into all aspects of the school community which includes instruction, instruction management and administration in an effort to increase the contact that the community has to information. One strategy the district is using is to open up computer labs and libraries for community access outside to school day so parents and community members use the facilities.
The fourth goal deals with infrastructure maintenance and updating. One strategy includes making a budget and timeline to make sure that the hardware and software needed can be purchased.
At McAllen ISD the “Design Center” has been in charge of coordinating the professional development for the staff. In the past teachers would have opportunities to get their professional development after school at the Design Center, led by the Instructional Technology staff. Presently the trend has been more towards distance learning, namely Element K, which gives teachers a chance to improve their skills while doing it online.
The Telecommunications services are constantly under review by the District Technology Board and the Information Technology staff. The budget is looked at and evaluated yearly, and applying for E-Rate is an ongoing process, making sure we fit the guidelines. As far as the non-discount element of the plan, this too is changing. In the past each school would get a budget for their technology needs, but as it turned out, some campuses would use this budget wisely and some did not. Also, due to the make-up of the schools, and the amount of students in each school, some schools would get more and others less. Both of these factors cause some discrepancies in what each individual campus would need. The board decided to take a look at each campuses needs and spread the money based on that instead. The goal was to bring up the outdated campuses so they could get at least to where others were.
McAllen ISD uses the Texas Teacher and Campus STaR Charts, District/Campus Hardware Inventory and District Professional Development Statistics to determine the district technology needs that will be addressed in this plan.
Bibliography
TEA. (2012). View/Create/Edit/Update a Technology Plan for MCALLEN ISD . Retrieved March 7, 2012, from Texas ePlan: https://www.sedl.org/cgi-bin/mysql/eplan/eplan.cgi
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