Program Evaluation 3/5/2010

Oak Run Middle School Technology Evaluation

Mission Statement: Excellence in Education for ALL students.

Safety Respect Responsibility

Goals:

  • Support Oak Run teachers through effective use of technology and expanded resource development
  • Increase the use of technology by students, faculty, and staff
  • Lead in the training of teachers to integrate technology and create lessons
  • Expand access to instructional technology in the classroom
  • Expand access to instructional technology support websites for faculty, staff, and students
  • Implement a student technology team to assist teachers in the implementation of Web 2.0 and other technology projects
  • Determine the technology needs of the school
  • Increase the number of grants written to meet the technology needs

Oak Run Technology and Demographic Data:

Oak Run Middle School (OR) is located in Comal County and serves 868 students in grades 6-8. Thirty eight percent of the student population qualifies for free and reduced lunch. There are 51 teachers with experience ranging from first year teachers to veterans of 30 years. . There is a synergistic lab equipped with PC’s and a technology classroom for computer readiness classes. Seven teachers have mimio boards, three teachers have tablets, and five teachers have sets of eleven iTouches. There are 3 computer labs with 25, 32, and 31 computers respectively. There is also a mobile cart with thirty laptops and fifteen iTouches for checkout from the library. Most classrooms have one teacher computer and if there is another computer it is an older model that may have limited functionality. The STAR chart from the 2009-2010 school year shows that all areas are in the developing tech classification.

Funding and Grants:

There are two main sources of training and equipment funding at OR. Budgeting for school technology is determined by the school district. Grants are also written by individual teachers to purchase technology. The school has been awarded grants for iTouches two years in a row. Over the summer data projectors were installed in all classrooms. The district also purchased document cameras, mimio’s and tablets this spring.

Needs Analysis:

  • A seven-question survey was conducted using SurveyMonkey to determine the needs of the teachers when using technology. The survey link was e-mailed to 51 faculty members with 35 responding resulting in a 68% response rate.
  • Teacher computers, projectors and the computer lab were considered by staff to be accessible and working 95% of the time. iTouches ranked third with a 47% accessibility ranking.
  • Teachers were asked to rank the technology used in class. The Mac word processing program called Pages was used by 91% of teachers and students. This was closely followed by Keynote (similar to PowerPoint) with 85% and Numbers (similar to excel) with only 55%. United Streaming videos were incorporated into the school day by 46% of teachers. The photo and video creating and editing programs were utilized by 30% of teachers. Only 18% of teachers used iTouch applications with students, while Inspiration followed with 15% of classes utilizing this mind mapping software. Web 2.0 applications ranked extremely low with only 12% of classes using “the cloud” to enhance learning. Read Naturally and Success Maker software were used by 9% of classes, which is appropriate because these two programs are for the development of reading skills.
  • Purchasing new computers and technology was ranked the largest need at 60%. Teachers felt they could integrate with students more if they had more one on one computer time.
  • Training to better utilize the computers was the second largest area of concern at 53%. Teachers feel that moving past the basic programs is rare because they teachers lack the training to integrate further.
  • Support with implementing technology and creating lessons with technology closely followed training with a 50% ranking.

Conclusion and recommendations:

The culmination of my research inspired a glance at several different schools in the New Braunfels and Comal School Districts. Consulting staff members from these schools led to the conclusion that many of the schools share the same two priorities, training and equipment. Oak Run faculty identified training and the lack of technology equipment to be the largest areas of concern also. Teachers use familiar resources, but do not have the lessons or time in the computer lab to engage students in regularly scheduled technology integration. An encouraging result of the survey is the interest in learning. The recommendation for training and lesson planning involves small group and one on one interventions allowing teachers to receive training based on their individual technology needs. This will maximize learning and increase technology use. Specific on going training and support will be a priority for teachers who acquired mimio boards and iTouches. All teachers will be updated on Web 2.0 applications to enhance learning in their content area. The need for more computers will have to be addressed with grants and better utilization of the available technology. Limited budgets will not allow for the purchase of more technology in the near future. Further questioning of teachers about computers that are not being utilized in the classrooms may provide enough technology for another lab or larger groups of computers in rooms where they will be used more frequently.