District Technology Plan Reflection

The District’s Technology Plan has four goals listed as follows:  the district will provide learners to all relevant technologies for individual instruction; the district will provide meaningful staff development to train faculty to implement technology in instruction;  the district will provide the resources to ensure proper uses of technology by faculty, staff, students, parent, and the community; and the district will provide a technology infrastructure that will facilitate communication and collaboration between faculty, students, the local community, international experts, and global databases. Some of the strategies include ensuring eLearning software is available, teacher support for web pages that help student foster online learning, staff development on project-based learning, and students creating technology products. Professional development opportunities are available in district periodically. They normally are during summer months or during the spring, and are presented by our IT Director.  These classes normally do not have any fees that go with them.  They are offered during the teachers off time (after school or during summer break). Only teachers interested in technology attend. Teachers are also encouraged to attend Regional Support Center training in technology. The equipment normally has the current or recent version of software. Within the past couple of years fiber optics was ran to the elementary schools to increase the bandwidth of the schools. The software is updated by our tech support staff.  If there are ever issues, we can notify the support person and they remedy the issue promptly. We have a program that the school uses to assist in teaching technology.  Speaking with our IT Director and personal knowledge of how teachers do things on the campus, the programs are not being utilized. With budgets being cut, there is never enough money to acquire new equipment.  This year our technology money went to the Middle and High School to acquire new technology (IPAD2s).  The campus that I am on WIFI is very spotty, and not much technology is being used toward student self-learning.  The technology committee meets once a semester to evaluate and make any adjustments to the vision of the technology plan.  Each person that is responsible for each strategy is held accountable to ensure the strategy is being performed.   

Resource: Farmersville ISD 2010-2013 District Technology Plan