Part of our integration planning has been to make sure we remove as many “barriers to success” as we can. We’ve tried to address all of them on our IT integration planning wiki.

Here’s the list we came up with during our planning – all of these items need to be in place for technology integration to be a success:

  • A clearly articulated, documented mandate for teacher expectations.
  • Understanding what IT integration is (and isn’t) and how the Facilitator can be utilized to enhance the teaching and learning experience.
  • Ability to flexibly utilize technology tools and infrastructure to meet the needs of global 21st Century teaching strategies.
  • Transparent curriculum infrastructure (wiki) – clear, easy to access documentation for the entire school curriculum.
  • Clearly articulated Year at a Glance maps from teachers and the establishment of static units, building on experiences from past years.
  • Understanding that collaboratively planned unites with authentic learning experiences that embed the backward design process result in higher achievement of the Standards & Benchmarks. Flexibility with the classroom dynamic and teaching is an essential component of 21st Century teaching and learning.
  • Creating, documenting and sharing common assessment practices.
  • Sharing successes with technology, both internally and through external visionaries on site within structure Professional Development as based on a mandate.
  • Common planning time with IT Facilitator – grade level teams (framework requires grade level planning time)
  • Classroom technology support, particularly for mobile carts (charging, set-up)
  • Instructional support – specifically the addition of middle and high lab assistant to support integration (the teacher will not always be proficient)
  • Revision of curriculum map format to embed IT integration.
  • Equitable access to technology resources.
  • Professional Development to increase teacher comfort level with technology (as supported by the roles listed in our framework)
  • Purchase of peripherals and software to enhance the teaching and learning experience.

What do you think? What are we missing?

7 thoughts on “IT Integration Planning: Requirements for Success

  1. Kim, you are certainly taking your school-wide approach to technology integration to a higher level. I think you have been fair in allocating points to infrastructure and curriculum and have made it very clear that the mandate for 21st century learning has to come first (the biggest hurdle I feel). Equitable access to resources is one of the biggest frustrations still as if this hurdle exists then teachers are not always willing to keep going to the next hurdle or the next. A simple tool such as a digital projector in every classroom can make the difference between being on board with the mandate or not.
    What sort of technology facilitator to teacher ratio are you advocating? One to 100 for example? One to a year level? One to a school section? Given that most schools, from what I can tell, have not embraced this position(s) as worthwhile….(what, not have your own classes!) I suggest you could come up with some suggestions as to what the facilitator model can look like. How many classes/students do you cater for? Is it too many? Also, administration structure…who makes the decisions? How powerful are YOU in your school? It would be interesting to compare notes on this ;-) You may have blogged about this before? If not, this is my request for your next blog post. Thanks again for your words of wisdom and inspiration!

  2. Hi Kim,

    I have doing exactly the same thing as you, in respect to trying to create a e-Learning and ICT Continuing Professional Development Vision, Plan and Documentation.

    We have a similar process, which is quite a relief, I have gone through my vision like so:

    1) Aims – for Teachers, Management & Trainers
    2) Training Analysis – What do we need to be able to do?
    3) Motivation – why we need to change?
    4) Application – How do we do this?
    5) Review – How do we know what has been done?
    6) Continuing Momentum – How do we keep going?

    This is by no way the best way or the only way to do this process, but I thought it might be useful if you saw the similarities and differences in our 2 processes.

    good luck with your project, I hope the wiki work all goes well!!!

  3. Julie,

    Thanks for all your positive feedback and great questions! I hope that my post from yesterday clarified things a bit better :)

    Paul,

    Thank you for sharing your process! We should chat about how things went in each of our schools. I’d be interested to hear about what you’re going through and to compare it to what we’re doing here.

  4. Kim-

    I was wondering if you had any documentation or can help me reference WASC for their recommendations on technology integration. The school is under a self-study and just got approved for accreditation…

    I am going to try to use this with ADMIN to show them how tech needs to move in the 21st century direction and to move to a 21st century learning environment. Which is defined as: not computer classes but to a more integrated” technology program.

    Many thanks,

    Afra*

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