Brian Mitchell School Evaluation

Demographics School T is an all-male Catholic high school. Its students come primarily from upper-middle class to upper class economic backgrounds. However, there is still a significant percentage of the student body from lower economic backgrounds and who receive financial aid. As a whole, School Ts students are high-achieving, with 98% going on to college. School T has a huge nationwide alumni base, many who are corporate and community leaders. From a technology standpoint, the students are highly developed. Most have computer and internet access at home and on their cell phones. Technology is an enormous part of their lives. In many ways, the students are far more developed than their teachers, in terms of technology. Administrative Policy: The administration of School T claims to be strong supporters of technology and to make it a high priority. However, the only official policy that exists relates to online grade reporting. There are no standards for technology use in the classroom or for developing skills in technology. Therefore, I rate School T as Emergent for Behavioral and Island for Resource. Planning: Again, the administration claims to strongly support technology. In so doing, technology has been an important focus in the five-year plan. However, the specifics of how the plan will be implemented and what form it will take are extremely vague. This is similar to our last fund-raising campaign, where technology was a focus, but was hastily implemented with little thought to the development of future technologies like HD television. With this in mind, I have rated School T as Islands for Behavior and Emergent for Resource. Budget: There is definitely a formal budget for technology at School T. This budget allows for the upgrade of computers at least every 3-5 years. Technology purchases are also strongly encouraged within other departmental budgets. However, when it comes to the use of the technology budgets, decisions are left to individual department chairs. There is no real formal planning for how the budgets will be used. Thus, purchases seem to be primarily on an asneeded basis, rather than fitting into a formal plan. With this in mind School T falls into Islands for Behavioral and Integrated for Infrastucture. Administrative Information: When it comes to administrative systems, every faculty member has access to and is required to use Edline and the included Gradequick plugins. All attendance and grading is done electronically and online and reported to students and their parents twice a week. This is official policy and required of every teacher. While School T does still use an enormous amount of paper, e-mail and the aforementioned administrative systems still allow for a significant amount of electronic communication. The one area that needs work, in terms of becoming paperless, is in classroom use for testing, assignments, and books. There are select classes that have either switched to online text or supplement printed books with them. For this reason, School T is rated as Integrated for both areas of Administrative Information.

Curricular Electronic Information: School T has a very technologically integrated library. While there are many printed books, it has a complex computerized material cataloging system to maintain inventory. The school also subscribes to an extensive collection of online research resources, similar to many universities. In addition, School T subscribes to the Discovery Education network, offering an enormous collection of online video clips and electronic tools and resources. Students and faculty, while they could still make better use of these offerings, do use them regularly and have become quite dependent on them. For this reason, School T is rated Integrated for Behavioral and Intelligent for Infrastructure. Assessment: Assessment is definitely an area where School T needs improvement. Teachers still overwhelmingly use written tests and Scantrons. Electronic testing software is available and is used a little. However, the administration discourages regular use of electronic testing. The one strong point in this area is in the area of grade reporting, where, as mentioned before, online grading is required. School T is rated as Emergent for Behavior and Islands for Resource. Curricular Integration: As previously mentioned, there are several courses where online books are available. However, these are used in addition to printed books, not instead of. While students are required to purchase printed books, several of these teachers do focus their classes on the online text. There are a few elective course that use completely electronic curricular materials. As mentioned earlier, there are multiple electronic resources available, such as the Kentucky Virtual Library and Discovery Education network. Despite the availability of electronic resources, there is no formal policy for their use. This is left to the discretion of the individual teacher. For this reason, School T is rated Islands for both areas. Teacher Use: There is a huge gap in the availability of electronic resource and the actual use by teachers. For this reason, Behavioral is rated Emergent while Resource is rated Intelligent. Only a few of the many electronic resources available to teachers have been mentioned here. There is no shortage of tools available. However, because their use is left to each teachers discretion, and there is an overall poor level of technology skills among School Ts faculty, very few of the faculty members actually use what is available to them. The ones who do only scratch the surface of what these resources can do. Student Use: Again, there is a huge availability of online resources to both faculty and students. Therefore, Resource in this area is rated as Intelligent. However, student use of these resources, while much better than the faculty, is still fairly limited. In most cases, however, the limited student use is the result of teacher restrictions being placed on students as to what electronic resources they can use. For this reason, Behavior is rated as Island.

Support Stakeholder Involvement: Recently, School T embarked on a five-year strategic planning campaign. Technology was a big part of this discussion. While every stakeholder in the school (faculty, students, parents, alumni) were either surveyed or participated directly in focus groups for this planning process, the groups and surveys were all very general in nature. There were

committees that met and made the specific decisions. One of these committees did a vague technology plan for the next five years. There were several teachers and administrators on this committee, but only one person was from the technology department. There were also no students represented. Thus, I feel the decisions made very not only very vague, but were not well representative of those who use technology the most. For this reason, I rate School T emergent in both behavior and resource. Administrative Support: During the planning an implementation of technology, especially in regard to the strategic plan, the administration is very well represented and highly involved. For this reason, School T is rated are Integrated. However, the down side to this is that the administration is extremely lacking in its members technology skills. Training: As of right now, School T has almost no staff training in technology areas. The sessions that do occur are simple half-day sessions related very specifically to the Edline system and basic SMART Technology skills. Its no wonder that the skills of the faculty are so low. However, in the new strategic plan, there is a provision for the hiring of a technology resource person to train faculty members in classroom technology integration. Since this hiring is still at least two years away, I still rate School T as emergent in both aspects of Training. Technical/Infrastructure Support: School T does have several technology staff who are happy to assist those needing help or support with technology-related issues. For this reason, the school is rated as Islands for the Resource aspect. However, with very few formal training sessions and an extremely small percentage of the faculty taking advantage of the basic ones that are offered, the school is rated as Emergent in the Behavior section.

Connectivity Local Area Networking (LAN): School T does have a high speed network throughout the campus that is available to both students and faculty. Wireless connectivity is limited to a few select areas. The network does get bogged down, however, when used for video editing or file storage and transfer. For this reason, the school is rated as Integrated for Infrastructure. In regards to use, every faculty member and student has ready access to the network and does so on a regular basis. However, this access is limited to internet connectivity and network file storage. There is no real advanced usage occurring. For this reason, the school is rated as Emergent for Behavior. District Area Networking (WAN): School T is an independent school with a self-sufficient campus. Thus, WAN issues dont apply. Internet Access: School T has internet access throughout the entire campus. Thus it is rated as Intelligent in the Infrastucture area. The entire staff and students use the internet regularly, but there is little curriculum integration and extensive blocking in place that does not allow access to Social Media sites or Youtube. For this reason, School T is rated as Islands in Behavior.

Communication Systems: E-mail is widely used amongst the faculty and administration and is essential in communication. For this reason, Behavior is rated as Intelligent. However, students are not given any sort of e-mail access and must use their own personal e-mail. So for Infrastructure, the rating is Islands.

Innovation New Technologies: When it comes to new technology, there are a few staff who readily reject it. However, most are open to it, if they are walked through it and given proper training. However, experimentation is not encouraged and there is no formal training. For these reasons, School T is rated as Islands in both Behavior and Infrastructure. Comprehensive Technologies: School T likes to brag about the technology in each classroom. However, this technology consists of a standard definition video projector, an SD closed circuit TV system with standard DVD/VCR combo units, a computer, and a SMART Technology Sympodium unit. So the reality is that the classroom technology remains rather basic in scope. This technology has limited use, as well, being used for showing movies and basic computer and Powerpoint usage. For these reasons, School T remains in the Islands rating for both Behavior and Infrastructure.

Conclusion Overall, I would rank School T as Islands in overall technology integration. The school does have extensive internet and computer access and uses e-mail and online grading extensively. However, the skills of the staff remain very low, as a result of an almost non-existent formal training system. In some cases, technology is flat-out rejected by staff, but highly embraced by a few. Most have an open mind about technology, but very little training and only basic skills. Most would love to learn more. Student skills are rather high, but this is mostly the result of their mid to upper-class economic backgrounds. There are a few areas where the school is highly evolved in technology, in the form of classes in Graphic Design, Digital Filmmaking, Robotics, and Web Design. The school also has a site license for the Adobe Master Suite. However, the number of students enrolled in these classes, and therefore receiving access to and training with this technology remains a low percentage of the student population. While the school loves to brag about its technologically advanced campus, it is actually pretty basic in scope. While the schools administration embraces the idea of and new uses of technology, there is a fundamental lack of understanding of exactly how that technology works and no formal training or integration into the classroom. Technology planning was an important part of the recently adopted strategic plan. The plans call for each student to have their own laptop within five years and for the whole school to become a wireless hotspot. However, there are no formal plans for how this technology will be integrated into the curriculum. However, there is a plan to hire a technology coordinator who is responsible for training

faculty in the use of technology. So there is hope that these deficiencies might change in the coming years. My biggest fear is that by the time these plans become reality, the school will already be well behind in the level of technology available. I fear that todays technology is being planned for five years down the road, setting up the school to be behind before it even gets started. This will never change unless those in charge of technology planning do not think more forwardly and the administration does not embrace a school-wide integration approach. Until that change in thinking occurs, the school will be hopelessly doomed to playing catch-up and to keep its Islands or perhaps Integrated rating.