Technology Plan Evaluation

by:
Takiela Langley
Michelle Smotzer
Courtney Waters
Virginia Corbett
 Module 3

Technology Planning Task 1

Find an example of a school district technology plan. Most school districts post them
online. Share the plans your group finds within your group. Each member of your group
should read each plan found. Answer these questions within your group:

(Takiela)
How are the plans similar?
Courtneys posted tech plan for Effingham includes goals and strategies to achieve those
goals. Takielas posted tech plans for Glyndale & Golden Isles also lists goals and
strategies to achieve them.
How are they different?
Courtneys posted tech plan for Effingham includes a review of its districts previous
plan, whereas Takielas posted tech plan for Golden Isles doesnt include a review of its
districts previous periods plan.
Who was involved in the creation of the plan?
Golden Isles Tech Plan- The principal, the media specialist, & teachers.

(Michelle)
How are the plans similar?
Takielas plan and my plan are similar, in which, my plan is used for an entire school
district and Takielas is used for a school within that same district. All plans are similar
in a number of ways by: informing readers where they currently are with technology
(labeling it as Current Reality or Exective Summary), showing statistics of current
inventory, and listing goals these systems plan to achieve in the future.
How are they different?
There are many differences in all of the technology plans, for example: the person or
persons who are responsible for writing them, how detailed they are, and of course 3 of
the 4 plans posted are all from different school districts. One major difference I saw
between the Effingham Plan and the rest, is that they have a huge section specifically
designed for Student Needs. In this section it showed a summary analysis of how
students performed on standardized tests did but showed the statistics for every school
not just by grade levels within the district.
 Who was involved in the creation of the plan?
I think Virginia did an excellent job in listing all persons involved with the different
plans. Some plans only consisted of one or few people and then one (Effingham)
consisted of a group or panel of people.

(Virginia)
How are the plans similar?
Glynn County Schools plan, SCCPSSs plan, and Effinghams plan all had some
similarities. Each had goals, vision and mission statements written into the plans. They
also had plans that covered numerous years as well as a plan to cover professional
development of staff. They also had a parent contract in the appendix section that
required the parents signature in order for children have technology access in schools.
This signed contract would be placed on file in the students permanent record.
Although Golden Isles Tech Plan Technology plan does not cover numerous years as do
the other plans, it too has some similarities to the other plans. It contained goals, vision
and mission statements as well as a plan for professional development.
How are they different?
All of the plans differ in number of pages. Some plans have more pages and cover more
items such as grants or current technology use. This is due to the fact that the more
extensive plans seems to cover larger school systems, while the plans with fewer pages
cover smaller school systems. Another difference is the person or persons responsible
for writing the plan. Some plans have one person responsible while others have a panel
of people involved in the process.

Who was involved in the creation of the plan?

SCCPSS-Chief Data and Information Officer
Glynn County- Superintendent, Systems Technology Coordinator, Director of
Technology Services
Effingham County- Panel of staff members
Golden Isles- Principal, Assistant Principal, Instructional Coach, Media Specialist

(Courtney)
How are the plans similar?
All of the plans followed the same basic layout. There was a section in each plan for
Vision for Technology Use; Current Reality; Goals, Benchmarks, and Strategies;
Communication and Marketing; and Professional Development. Each of these sections
included different subcategories within each plan and other sections were present in
each of the plans but the five main categories were present in each.

How are they different?

All of the plans are different in many ways. One of the things I noticed that was a huge
difference was what Michelle has already said. The Effingham plan had a huge section
dedicated to Student Needs and broken down by each school. It included statistics on
standardized tests as well as very specific goals for each school. Another difference I
noticed was the Current Reality sections were quite different. The Glynn county plan
provided a brief chart with the exact number of tech tools for the county. The Effingham
plan gave only specific numbers about computers available system wide and a generic
summary of what was available to teachers, parents, and students. The Chatham
County plan gave very specific statistics about computers available and even included
pie charts and the State Technology Inventory Report.

Who was involved in the creation of the plan?

Virginia covered this quite well.

Finally, each member of your group should answer the following question in the
Module 3 Task 1 discussion forum by Sunday:

What most surprised you about the technology plans your group examined?

(Virginia)
What most surprised you about the technology plans your group examined?
One of the things that surprised me the most about the technology plans was how
detailed they were, as well as how long they were. The plans covered multiple steps
about the history of where the school systems are and where they want to be in the next
few years. These plans also detailed how they planned to get to where they want to be in
the next few years. The plans covered multiple amounts of information, even down to
the contracts that parents need to sign for their children to participate in technology at
school. It seemed like the plans had covered pretty much all the bases of getting from
point A to point B.

(Michelle)
What most surprised you about the technology plans your group examined?
After examining all of my groups plans, I was very impressed with how detailed and
informative they all were. It looks like the plans are very well thought out and
individuals spent a great deal of time working on them. I can definitely see why some
are valid for 3 years versus only one. The one thing that I was very surprised about was
the pre-k grant discussed in the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System
technology plan. Since I currently work in pre-k, at a school containing only pre-k
classes versus an elementary school, I was surprised as to how many computers they
were given to have in their classrooms. According to the grant the district was given 22
computers to place in pre-k classrooms for the students to explore and play education
games on. Im not sure if those 22 computers were in addition to or what but that just
doesnt seem like enough computers, unless the districts program is not that large. This
really surprised me because at my school there are 13 classes and then 12 more classes in
the elementary schools, we have 3 computers per class plus one lab top computer. I just
couldnt imagine only having one!

(Courtney)
What most surprised you about the technology plans your group examined?
The thing that surprised me the most were how detailed most of the plans were. Even
though they all varied somewhat it was evident that a lot of time and thought were put
into all of the plans. The plans that were for an entire county were especially detailed
and it seemed that they each had all of their bases covered. The statistics and
information about the technology in each county also surprised me. I did not realize
that to find out how many computers, phones, interactive whiteboards, etc the county
has all I have to do is simply look at the technology plan. That information could be
informative especially to teachers considering jobs elsewhere or to parents moving to a
new school district. One thing that surprised me about Effingham Countys plan, which
is my school district, was the lack of training for safe internet practices. Even though
one of the goals was Increase awareness of safe practices pertaining to internet
utilization it was clear that this was not a priority and had not been implemented in
many schools at all. It stated on the plan that only some school had been trained and
only some teachers had been trained. This shocked me because we have been getting
lots of new Chromebooks in our classes the past few years and the students are using
them more and more but there is little to no training on safe practices which I think is
critical when implementing technology in the classroom.
 Technology Plans to Consider

Takiela Langley's found tech plan (click link)

Courtney Waters found tech plan (click link)

Michelle's found tech plan (click link)

Virginia's found tech plan (click link)

Technology Planning Task 2 and 3

1) Create an annotated list of technology plan resources that you consulted to
investigate school technology plans.
Your list must contain at least 10 resources.
Your list must contain the title of the resource, the reference for the
resource, and a paragraph description of the relevance of the
resource to your work on this project.
1. Glyndale Technology Plan, Glyndale Tech Plan Reference Link, This
resource is relevant to this project because it is a technology plan of an
actual elementary school in my district. Its relevant because it includes
the visions and goals of the technology plan. I like the way the school
compares their vision for the technology plan versus their current reality
and list the challenges of meeting the goals (i.e. budget cuts). This
technology plan also lists our school systems technology goals as well as
the goals for their particular school.
2. Golden Isles Technology Plan, Golden Isles Tech Plan Reference
Link, This resource is relevant to this project because it is a technology
plan of an actual elementary school in my district. Its relevant because it
includes the mission and vision of the technology plan. I like that this
schools plan includes a survey of their teachers on their schools
technology issues. I like the way the school compares their vision for the
technology plan versus their current reality and list the challenges of
meeting the goals (i.e. budget, understaffing of technology support
personnel, and aging tech infrastructure).

3. National Center for Technology Planning: Developing Effective

Technology Plans This is a good resource for technology planning
 because it gives an overview of what a technology plan should do and how
to make it effective. There is information included about how to integrate
technology and benefit from it across the curriculum instead of just
teaching computer skills. Some other things to consider that are covered
are linking technology plans to staff development, cost analysis, and staff
implementation.
4. Six Step Process in Creating a Technology PlanThis resource gives
a step by step account of how to create a school or county technology plan.
It gives information about the necessary parts of a the plan as well as a list
of who might be included in the planning committee. There is also a
timeline to help know how long each step should take. The guiding
questions are also helpful to focus the plan and make sure it stays on
course.
5. The Digital Learning Plan Every Educator Should Read
This resource was located on Galileo. It discussed the state of North
Carolinas learning plan. They spoke with 115 schools in town hall
meetings to collect data. They found out exactly how tech savvy teachers
are in their use of technology in the classroom. 19% of districts in the state
confessed to only just beginning to move toward becoming digital, while
just 6% rated themselves advanced. Ultimately, the digital age is about
changing the role of the teacher in the classroom and changing the way
school works. The plan included a rubric of where the schools would fall
in terms of technology readiness. This resource could be helpful with
looking at rubrics for our project.
6. District Technology Plan Rubric This site shows an example of a
technology plan that would be good to use as a reference when planning
our group rubric. We could use this as a reference. It demonstrates and
contains most of the 6 elements that is required for our rubric.
7. Developing Rubrics This resource explains in detail how to develop a
rubric and why we use rubrics. This source also explains how to set the
scale and how to clearly define the ratings, which we will be doing when
creating ours.
8. Technology Planning Rubric This resource is another example of a
technology plan that we could refer to when working on our rubric as a
group. It contains at least 4 of the elements that we will be grading and
also explains why the element was given that rating.
9. Technology Plans and Distance Education This Galileo article
discusses an element of the technology plans that is an upcoming part of
the future of education. This topic is distance
 education/e-learning/virtual schools. 25% of schools are offering this
option now. Within the next decade, and most states will be offering this
educational option. We can use this article to think about new options to
add to the rubric for future plans.
10. Technology planning in schools: An integrated
research-based model. This is a Galileo article about the dimension of
technology planning according to TPS. They are the cyclic process, the
content dimension, an interaction dimension, a strategy dimension, and a
product dimension.

2) Create a rubric for evaluating school system technology plans. Your

rubric must at a minimum include the following 6 elements:

Rubric for Evaluation of Technology Plan (link)

3) The completed rubric showing how you scored the technology plan in
Task 3. Be sure to clearly identify the plan you chose to evaluate (e.g. give a
url for it)

Bulloch County School System Technology Plan (link)

Scored Rubric of Bulloch County School Systems Technology Plan

Criteria 3 2 1

Professional States an States a professional Does not include a

Development easy-to-understand development plan that staff development
professional is not easily plan, or the plan is not
development plan that understood, but states easily understood and
is driven by factors that it is driven by one is driven by neither of
including: topics that of the following the following factors:
the staff wants or needs factors: topics that the topics that the staff
more development in & staff wants or needs wants or needs more
the needs of the more development in; development in; the
Score: 2 students. the needs of the needs of the students.

Tele- Provides clear and
communication comprehensive
Services/Hard- requirements for
ware/Software/ services available and
Other services needed to support
technology use. It
clearly states the
capabilities of
hardware and identifies
minimum standards
and requirements for
computer hardware,
software, and
connectivity.
Score: 3
Accessibility of Provides clear
Technology description of how
Resources technology resources
are currently used in
learning environment
and ways it will be used process for students.
to achieve instructional
outcomes.
Describes how
technology resources
will be used to assist assistance to the
and enhance
curriculum, teaching
Score: 3 and learning.
Budget Budget provides
summary of current
expenses as well as
projection of future
expenses including but
not limited to
hardware, staff, staff
development, and
maintenance. Identifies
sources of funding and
plan to acquire
alternative funding
through grants, federal
students.
Technical support Technology support is
requirements and absent or provides
services description little information on
are adequate but not requirements and
comprehensive. The services. The
plan provides a description of
general description of hardware, software,
hardware, software, and connectivity
and connectivity standards are missing,
standards and incomplete, or vague.
requirements that are
clear, but may be
missing some
information elements.
Provides overview of Accessibility of
current and future use technology resources
of technology statement absent or
resources in the provides incomplete
teaching- learning information about the
current use or future
Little detail on how role of technology in
technology resources the school or district
will be integrated into and how it will
learning and enhance learning.
learning process.
Budget provides either Budget does not
a summary of current provide summary of
expenses or projection current or future
of future expenses but expenses. Sources of
not both. Summary funding are not
may be vague. Some evident. There is no
sources of funding are plan for reassessment.
provided but there is Budget is not realistic
no plan to acquire or is not in accordance
alternative funding. with the goals and
No timeline is objectives of the
provided for technology plan.
reassessment.
 funding, community
resources, etc.
Provides a timeline for
reassessment of the
budget and
opportunities for
necessary changes.
Budget is realistic and
is in accordance with
the goals and objectives
laid out in the
technology plan.
Score: 2
Ongoing Provides necessary
Evaluation data as well as a plan for evaluation. Only
for data collection to be qualitative or
used for both
qualitative and
quantitative evaluation.
A plan for ongoing
evaluation of
measurable and
realistic goals is
evident. Evaluation
considers and includes
all aspects of the
technology plan.
Score: 2
Goals States
easy-to-understand
goals, includes one or
more strategies on how
to accomplish those
stated goals, & states
party/parties
responsible to
Score: 3 accomplish the goals. goals.
Overall Score Level 3
13-18 pts
Score: 15
**We gave the plan a 15 overall, therefore, the plan is a Level 3
according to our rubric.
Budget is somewhat
realistic and but may
not be in accordance
with the goals and
objectives laid out in
the technology plan.
Little data is provided There is no data is
provided for
evaluation. No plan
quantitative evaluation ongoing evaluation is
are used. Plan for evident. Few aspect of
ongoing evaluation the technology plan
includes some are considered.
measurable and
realistic goals. Some
but not all aspects of
the technology plan
are considered.
States goals that are Omits goals or states
not easily understood, goals that are not
includes a strategy to easily understood and
accomplish those neglects to state the
stated goals, and states party/parties
the party/parties responsible for
responsible for accomplishing the
accomplishing the goals.
Level 2 Level 1
7-12 pts 0-6 pts
4) Recommendations for the plan based on your evaluation

Takiela:
Professional development:
rating- 2
rationale for rating- It is not easily understood whether the professional development is
provided based on the needs of the students. The plan includes a section apart from the
professional development section that is titled: Student Academic Needs, but the plan doesnt
state a clear link between the two sections. The plan states: The committee recommends
that media specialists pair with a teacher in order to have a consistent, district-wide
plan for training new hires (all faculty, certified and classified) in using various
programs and other identified needs. Since this quote falls under the Instructional
Uses of Technology, I took it to refer to the professional development of the staff. Also,
the plan didnt provide a section referring to professional development of the students.
recommendation(s)- I recommend that Bulloch County would revise its technology plan to
state that it will provide professional development based on the needs and desires of the staff
and students as determined by using some type of survey for the teachers, and some type of
needs assessment based on objectives and standards for the students. People are more receptive
to learning when they feel they have say in what is being taught.

Michelle:
Telecommunication Services/Hardware/Software/ Other services- 3
I gave Telecommunication Services/ Hardware/ Software/ Other Services a score of 3
because it clearly states all services available for telecommunications and technology
support in the district. It also gives a clear, defined list of all software programs
purchased school wide and county wide. This plan addresses specific gaps with
hardware and software that need to be closed ( in elementary, middle, and high schools)
in order for standards to be meet in regular education and special needs classrooms.
This plan also describes the services it has in place for all admin, parents, and students.
To improve this area of Bulloch Countys Technology Plan, I would suggest that the plan
be even more specific than it already is when discussing its technical support area. It
informs one that the primary solution to resolve a problem is through IT Direct and
explains that first and second level support is provided by the department to every
location. It also states that various support personnel can also help with technology
troubleshooting. Instead of saying various personnel, the plan could give specific names
as well as phone numbers and extensions to make it easier to communicate when
needing assistance.
Virginia: Accessibility of Technology Resources: 3
I gave Accessibility of Technology Resources a 3, because it gave a clear description of
how the systems technology resources are currently used in classrooms, media centers,
and administration. A clear picture was demonstrated how these resources were being
used in the learning environments to improve instruction, drive instruction or train staff
to use technology in order to teach with it or use it in the classroom. There also were
descriptions of how technology resources will be used to enhance curriculum, teaching
and learning via use of SMART boards, document cameras, chromebooks, IPads and
BYOD (bring your own device) to school for learning. Educating parents about the use
of technology in the classroom is one of the hardest issues facing the district due to lack
of participation. The district is trying new ways to get parents to participate in
educational technology sessions.
To improve this area of the plan, I would suggest that Bulloch County develop a plan to
move forward with hiring an Instructional Technology Specialist. At this time, media
specialists are performing the added duties of staff training and tech support. This
would add to staff development and the ability to support technology better. I would
also recommend a more detailed plan surrounding the BYOD to school. There needs to
be a plan for students and parents to be involved with, so that the district will not be
responsible for any theft or damage to personal devices. Also, there needs to be
stipulations about what students are able to view on these personal devices as well.

Courtney:
Budget- 2
I gave Budget a score of 2 because there is no summary of current expenses in the
technology plan. While some sources of funding are identified they are vague using
terms such as explore grants and community assistance will be needed. There is
evidence of the use of grants however, there is no plan to acquire new grants and no
information about how grants could be used. The budget that is provided is realistic and
what information is provided does line up with individual goals.
Bulloch County needs to include a more detailed budget section in their
technology plan. They need to identify the current cost of technology being used and
outline the cost of each new goal in their plan. This way they, as well as anyone viewing
the plan, will be able to see current expenses as well as a projection of future expenses
and will be able to compare the two. The budget section also needs to include a plan to
acquire funding from outside sources and be more specific about what grants or federal
funding can be applied for and used toward. The budget information that is provided is
realistic however, it is incomplete and more information would be beneficial.
Ongoing Evaluation score- 2
I gave Ongoing Evaluation a score of 2 because there is not a clear plan for the
ongoing evaluation of all goals listed. There is a timeline and method of evaluation
provided for some but not all goals and it is not evident how data will be used to
evaluate these goals even though much data is provided in the technology plan.
To improve this area of their technology plan Bulloch County needs to be more
specific in the Evaluation Method TImeline section of their Goals and Benchmarks
chart. They need to include specific information about what data will be used to
evaluate each goal and they need to provide a clear plan and timeline for the evaluation
of each goal. Also, under the Communication and Marketing section of the technology
plan there is reference to evaluating the plan periodically and having regularly
scheduled meetings to ensure that the plan is implemented. This is quite vague
however, and does not lay out a method for evaluation or explain what criteria will be
used. Both need to be specifically stated in the plan.

Goals:
rating- 3
rationale for rating- The plan stated more than one strategy for each goal and documented
the department(s) responsible for facilitating goals accomplishment.
recommendation(s)- I recommend that the technology plan be organized better in layout.
When looking for information under a specific section header, it appeared to have been
overlooked by the plan creators. Upon searching for other information, I found mention of the
seemingly overlooked information. A good information layout is key to the plan being easily
understood by any reader.