Technology+Facilitator+Standard+VII

= Technology Facilitator Standard VII – Procedures, Policies, Planning, and Budgeting for Technology Environments =

__Reflection__
Technology Facilitator Standard VII indicators address ones ability to properly plan, budget and establish procedures for technology infrastructure in schools. I was very fortunate to be in a technology rich environment with a very helpful department chair, and technology specialist who aided my understanding of current policies and procedures in place at our school and district wide. I learned statewide there is a distinction between funding for Career Technology Education courses and all other courses. CTE is funded under Perkins, while other courses are funded from the school budget. Both monies are in the hands of the residing principal, however, CTE funds can only be used to pay CTE teachers salaries, and support CTE programs. This funding is the reason CTE programs have more technology than the average classroom. Recently however there are many more grants and programs to improve technology in core classes in particular Math and Science. Concerning classroom instruction I spoke with our department chair and technology specialist to inventory technology equipment, and software available to check-out. My classroom is already equipped with one computer per student, a color and black and white laser printer, scanners, and a projector. In addition, I have the Adobe CS4 Suite, Office 2007, and Vision software. I have done research on classroom setup to optimize technology access and space utilization (TF-VII.A.1). All of our technology equipment is networked which allows us to share resources within the classroom and school wide.(TF-VII.A.3) The school has mass storage space on the school server for teachers, however it is not permitted with students. Previously students were required to obtain a USB drive, however this upcoming school year we will use the storage space within Schoology.com for storage, therefore eliminating the need for individual USB storage devices (TF-VII.A.2, TF-VII.A.4, TF-VII. B.6). Prior to the implementation of Schoology.com, I used simple network shared drive technology to share resources from my hard drive to students computers through the use of my I.P. address and file sharing tools built into the Microsoft O.S. (TF-II.A.7). The CTE department in HISD has taken major steps to alleviate the need to identify technology equipment and resources for our individual programs. Trough organized district wide meetings by department and subject the essential technologies needed for each program were identified, and each year a program is by upgrading all teachers in the district who teach that course with the necessary equipment. In evaluating our programs, I have assess that I have the technology tools, what many of us require is more training, and online tools available without purchase such as Wikis, and Blogs (TF-VII.B.1, 2, 4, 7). My department chair allowed me to implement mini professional developments within the group of teachers who teach the same content as myself to enhance their learning of Web 2.0 tools.(TF-VII.C.1)