Interview with a Technology Coordinator
Houston County Board of Education Technology Coordinator Bob Blalock was more than happy to grant an interview regarding technology for an aspiring leadership student. Mr. Blalock has performed technology duties since 2005 and served as my technology contact during my tenure as a Business Marketing teacher at Houston County High School. I consider Mr. Blalock to be a very supportive advocate of technology use in schools. The Houston County School System serves approximately 6,300 students at ten different campuses’ as well as the central office, bus shop and career technical center. The current technology staff consists of a coordinator and two technology technicians. The staff of three maintains …show more content…
There wasn’t evidence that technology is being used to assess learning by providing students with options to decide which tools to use to create evidence of learning. Students in grades K-12 were utilizing vendor produced digital curriculums for instruction and remediation as well as ACCESS classes on secondary campuses. High school campuses appear to be slightly ahead of technology use for students in the classroom. While all teachers had been supplied with a new laptop during the 2014-15 school year, the technology staff couldn’t easily identify the cause of disconnect between technology and true integration in the …show more content…
Teachers were fully utilizing their new laptops to connect remotely and had become more efficient in their administrative classroom duties using the newer and faster hardware. So to address this problem of technology for instructional use, the system contracted with Chalkable to provide technology integration training for all campuses. A total of twenty five days of professional development was purchased for classroom technology integration training. At the end of the training, teachers felt more comfortable with their knowledge of the available technology tools, but continue to have problems with less than adequate network and internet access in the classroom. Through the process of providing professional development, a nagging concern was confirmed—the infrastructure in place wasn’t capable of handling the demands necessary for true technology integration in every classroom. Since more teachers were now able to describe and identify the barriers creating their frustrations after training, the “monkey” was now on the back of the technology
Houston County Board of Education Technology Coordinator Bob Blalock was more than happy to grant an interview regarding technology for an aspiring leadership student. Mr. Blalock has performed technology duties since 2005 and served as my technology contact during my tenure as a Business Marketing teacher at Houston County High School. I consider Mr. Blalock to be a very supportive advocate of technology use in schools. The Houston County School System serves approximately 6,300 students at ten different campuses’ as well as the central office, bus shop and career technical center. The current technology staff consists of a coordinator and two technology technicians. The staff of three maintains …show more content…
There wasn’t evidence that technology is being used to assess learning by providing students with options to decide which tools to use to create evidence of learning. Students in grades K-12 were utilizing vendor produced digital curriculums for instruction and remediation as well as ACCESS classes on secondary campuses. High school campuses appear to be slightly ahead of technology use for students in the classroom. While all teachers had been supplied with a new laptop during the 2014-15 school year, the technology staff couldn’t easily identify the cause of disconnect between technology and true integration in the …show more content…
Teachers were fully utilizing their new laptops to connect remotely and had become more efficient in their administrative classroom duties using the newer and faster hardware. So to address this problem of technology for instructional use, the system contracted with Chalkable to provide technology integration training for all campuses. A total of twenty five days of professional development was purchased for classroom technology integration training. At the end of the training, teachers felt more comfortable with their knowledge of the available technology tools, but continue to have problems with less than adequate network and internet access in the classroom. Through the process of providing professional development, a nagging concern was confirmed—the infrastructure in place wasn’t capable of handling the demands necessary for true technology integration in every classroom. Since more teachers were now able to describe and identify the barriers creating their frustrations after training, the “monkey” was now on the back of the technology