School or District Technology Plan

The Willis ISD technology plan was a lot different then I thought it might have been before I first reviewed it. It was very in depth and used the state standards as its guiding force. I had never realized how much money it took to keep nine schools running with the technology needs in today's world.

The stated goals in the plan came down to six basic needs. Number 1 was to simply continue to update technology. In the past seven years I have had three new computers so this makes sense. Number 2 was to develop meaningful staff development. This area we are constantly working on at our campus. We hold staff development sessions in our off periods, before school, and are sent to places like Region 6 and TCEA for training. Number 3 equalize technology in all classrooms. I can not speak for all of the campuses, but we seem to place items where they will do the most good first. The rest of the areas receive the new tech as it becomes available. Number 4 provide more ways to access data via the Internet. No campus that I know of is without Internet access. In fact the report gives us an assurance that all of the campuses have Internet. Number five improve our communications to our customers. In today's classrooms we have Internet. Our phone calls are routed to our computers so that they can leave voice mail. Even our signing in at the front desk only seems to require an identification card to put in the machine to process your information. I don't know how much more we can improve the system, but someone will some day. Lastly, number six calls for the buildings to become wireless hot spots.

With all of these goals in place we are constantly in need of training. To that end our individual campus administrators are responsible for that area. They coordinate the training at the campus level and use our instructional technology specialists to accomplish those goals. In addition when there are funds available we are often sent to other areas such as Region 6 ESC or even to the TCEA conference. Then those individuals are sent back to teach others in the skills that they learn.

At present the budget and the real world situations seem to meet in the middle. We receive the most up to date technology as it is available. We evaluate our efforts using things such as the STaR reports, employee feedback, and updated information from outside sources.