Technology Use Planning Overview

Definition:

As with all major revolutionary overhauls in education and teaching, there needs to be a plan. A technology use plan is a way to hold teachers and educators accountable for implementing proven technological advances within the walls of their classrooms (or at home if possible). Without a vision of what ultimately needs to happen for an endeavor of this size to take place, nothing will get done. Just as teachers make lesson plans to plot what needs to be done and guide instruction on how to get there, educational professionals need to plot a course on how to make this idea take shape. 

National Educational Technology Plan 2010 as a resource:

The National Educational Technology Plan 2010 can be used as an overarching vision of what technology could ultimately become. Not every school in every district across the world will be able to use this plan as an effective resource in the same ways. As with all programs and resources introduced into mainstream education, they need to fine tuned and adapted by the districts themselves to be used in a way that will best support the needs of the schools. If utilized to its full potential, the National Educational Technology Plan 2010 can be seen as a powerful resource. When planning to implement a full scale technology overhaul, there needs to be a guide that is strong and unwavering. If a school district has the means to make the plan possible, that it can be the most powerful guide to creating the ultimate technological powerhouse of a school.

Short term VS long term plans:

John See, a Technological Integration Specialist for the Minnesota Department of Education, believes that long term technology plan are not ideal for schools to adapt because, "Technology is changing so fast that it is almost impossible to plan what type of technology will be available for use five years from now." I think school districts need to have a vision of what their technology will ultimately look like in a long term plan that should not exceed five years. If you think back within the past five years, technology such as tablets and laptops that transform into tablets have become common. In another five years, who knows what else will exist. Although a long term idea should be in place, the most important part of any plan is the short term steps to achieve that long term goal. Short term goals can be adapted and changed based on the need of the situation. If schools and districts can build stepping stone short term implementation goals, it will not be a problem to change the plan if a change is necessary. Schools should not just create a short term plan without a long term vision, though. With sporadic, short term goals, there can be a loss of cohesion within the technological processes. All the different short term projects may even counter one another and cause more chaos than successes in the classroom.

Applications, not technology:

As with any other technology or product, it's not the product itself that means anything, it's how the product is being used. For example, a school could have the most up-to-date and expensive technology known to man, but not putting up the scores it should be getting. How is this possible? Well, just like some people use a normal laptop for writing papers or watching music videos, other people use the same laptop to record multi-million dollar songs. We are using the same technology as it was designed, we are just all using it in different ways. A truly effective technology plan will focus more on how that technology is going to be used universally among their staff and students to optimize the technology. 

My technology use planning experiences:

At my school, within our weekly lesson plans, there is a section where we need to specify exactly what technology is being used and how it is going to shape our lessons. Whenever I start a new unit, I give a pre-test on one of our adaptive learning software to get a general assessment of what my students know and which students need more of an intervention than the others. With technology like this, I can group students based on their needs and shape my lesson content and the class itself to teach specifically what it is that my students need to know. Of course, students don't always take these assessments seriously so I need to remain flexible and change groups at the spur of the moment if necessary. I will also assess students at the half way mark of a unit and at the end to determine which students need an even more intense intervention and which students can move on to the next level.