Week1AssignmentReflection

EDLD 5306 Concepts of Educational Technology In the concepts of educational technology course, we looked in depth at the Texas Long Range Technology plan. Even as a veteran educator, I was unaware of the state’s plan. It was a good time to reflect on the campus I was at at the time to see if what we were doing coincided with where the state projected us to be in the future. In order to officially assess how well each campus is doing, the state created the STaR (School Technology and Readiness) chart. Each teacher logs in and is able to rate his/her campus, as well as themselves, on the use of technology and hardware available to them. This chart provides powerful information to the staff, administration, and, of course, the state. This is the course in which we were first introduced to Wikis. It was very exciting because it made it easy to submit assignments as well as work on them all via the internet. It has also been a powerful tool with my students. We have done many projects with the Wikis and the children have loved them. It took a while, but I finally got my teammates on board with using wikis, and they, too, love them!

EDLD 5333 Leadership for Accountability We started off this course by examining our campus’ Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Coming from a very data-driven Title I campus, I was quite well aware of our AYP. While I was aware of our AYP, it was because we were always given the data and had our hand held through the process of looking at it. This course gave me the tools and guidance I needed to locate and segregate this data on my own. Once we learned how to look at the data more closely, we then used it to create goals. This is important as a leader, because it correlates with our campus improvement plan. After we created the goal, we put it into action with a budget and planning professional development. There is no need to waste resources (both time and money) purchasing items, software, etc. and training a staff on areas that do not need improvement.