As a team analyze the Lotusville case study.

1. What observations can you make regarding the effectiveness of the planning process in the Lotusville school district?
2. Do you have any suggestions for improving it? Consider especially the structure, membership of the committees, evaluation, and feedback.
3. Compared with your own environment, does Lotusville appear to be more or less effective in the way it plans for technology?
4. If you were the district superintendent, what courses of action might you consider or recommend to the Planning Committee to help resolve some of the recent issues identified regarding instructional computing?

 

Compare your observations as a team and answer the questions here.

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 Kristin Haefke, Kristin Hubmann, Melissa Schuett, Janet Yunker

 

APA- Angie Jurisch, Anna Lardinois and Peg Meddaugh

 

1.      What observations can you make regarding the effectiveness of the planning process in the Lotusville school district?

When viewing the planning process for the Lotusville district, we immediately reacted to the members of the planning committee.  We were concerned that only one teacher was part of the planning process.  In reviewing the list of participants, it would seem that the committee would be better served if end users and “in the trenches” employees were also included, rather than focusing solely on those in administrative and supervisory roles.  

While getting the right team members is critical, what is equally crucial is have a clearly defined vision in place before implementing a plan. It seems as if the group needs to identify the overall district goals, and then determine how technology can meet those goals before planning or purchasing can being.

2.      Do you have any suggestions for improving it? Consider especially the structure, membership of the committees, evaluation, and feedback.

As stated above, we believe the process would improve with the inclusion of varied staff members. We feel it is critical for the group to define the academic goals that it would like to achieve before beginning the process to plan any technology solutions.  Once this is defined, the group can then begin a prescribed planning.

3.      Compared with your own environment, does Lotusville appear to be more or less effective in the way it plans for technology?

Our team contains members of SDW and Mukwonago School District.  Both districts have clearly defined technology goals, where Lotusville does not appear to have a vision of what they would like to achieve with or through technology.   Mukwonago School District improves upon Lotusville’s team makeup by models our suggestions about planning committee membership by including teachers, librarians and students.

4.      If you were the district superintendent, what courses of action might you consider or recommend to the Planning Committee to help resolve some of the recent issues identified regarding instructional computing?

As a superintendent we would connect the team with the district mission statement as well as the districts overall curricular goals so they can begin assessing how the technology in the district will best serve to meet these goals.  We would encourage the team to include more end users and to evaluate the programs and technology levels already in place in each of the buildings before beginning any planning

 

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Thunder-Jamie Beckman, Jim Nelson, Paul Pulvermacher, Dan Simonson

 

1. What observations can you make regarding the effectiveness of the planning process in the Lotusville school district?

   It seems that they have attempted to implement technology by purchasing more technology. They have made considerable effort to add computers in the district, particularly at the high school. With the limited information we have, we know nothing about their mission or vision as a committe or district for that matter. The only information they really have provided is who is on these committees and how many computers they have purchased since 1987.

    

2. Do you have any suggestions for improving it? Consider especially the structure, membership of the committees, evaluation, and feedback.

   Create a vision and a plan of action. They have a lot of the movers and shakers on these committees, but they have a sever lack of teachers involved in these plans. Since teachers are the ones that ultimately will be implementing technology in the classroom, they need to have more of them involved in the plannin process. Interestingly (and disturbingly) enough, the only teachers on these comittees are from the high school. The middle and elementary schools have no voice right now.

    

3. Compared with your own environment, does Lotusville appear to be more or less effective in the way it plans for technology?

   In Muskego, we have a committee made up of Bob Boyd, administrators from each building, parents, and elementary teachers . We have a mission, a vision, values, and strategic priorities. The plan set is to be implemented by 2010.

    

   Kettle Moraine and Arrowhead administered the enGuage survey to students, staff and administration to draw statistical and descriptive analysis of the current status of resources and technology. Basically, they assessed what they have and what they need. At Km the comittee is made of everybody BUT teachers...... 

    

4. If you were the district superintendent, what courses of action might you consider or recommend to the Planning Committee to help resolve some of the recent issues identified regarding instructional computing?

   We need to implement the planning process we have been studying in this course. The first step is to get more teachers from each level on the planning committees. Next would be to create a vision, mission statement and a plan. Before the plan is developed, they must survey the district to see what/how technology is being used. The plan must include staff development.

    

 

 

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Chris See, Brian Yearling, Heather Slosarek

 

1.  What observations can you make regarding the effectiveness of the planning process in the Lotusville school district?

As several groups stated, one of the primary concerns in regards to the effectiveness of this school district's planning process was the limited amount of vision, goals, and objectives created before making decisions about the number of computers installed in the district.  While the school district has 450 microcomputers in computer labs and classrooms, a variety of computer software packages, Internet capabilities, and a full-time technology coordinator, nothing was mentioned about time or money allotted for staff development and training.  The case study also mentions that all the classrooms will be wired for the Internet within the year, but there was no indication whether there was a need for the unspecified number of computers in the classroom to have Internet capabilities and/or how many teacher utilized classroom computers for instruction. 

 

Another concern was that annual standardized test scores (of the students) indicated that academic achievement had actually decreased slightly during the past five years.  There is an obvious disconnect between the planning and advisory committees that are purchasing the hardware/software and those people who directly affect student learning and achievement - primarily the classroom teachers and the other support staff within the building.

 

Interestingly, the district superintendent seemed hesitant to move forward with technology integration when there was a mention of the need for "an extensive new staff development program" because teachers (especially those requesting classrooms computers at the primary level) were not familiar enough with the technology to use it effectively.  This was a major oversight on behalf of the planning and advisory committees.  There should have been a plan to include staff development programming throughout the entire change process.  The concern "after the fact" leads people to believe that the focus was on quantity versus quality - there was barely any consideration for how this technology could help improve student learning and achievement, which led to unfocused integration and little effectiveness.

 

 

2.  Do you have any suggestions for improving it?  Consider especially the structure, membership of the committees, evaluation, and feedback.

First and foremost, the Lotusville school district needs to create a technology integration vision with outlined goals, objectives, and assessments.  The goals and objectives need to be focused not only on quantity of computers (Internet-wired computers) available in a given school, but also on quality of the products beings introduced, sofware being utilized, and instruction being given using the new technology.  The goals and objectives should be student-driven; there shouldn't be technology introduced for the sake of having technology, rather there should be a student-centered reason why the technology is being introduced with the direct connection to how they will go about implementing the technology into the curriculum.  More importantly, there needs to be some type of assessment given throughout the planning and implementation process.  Teachers and students should fill out a needs assessment before any other technology decisions are made, and they should also assess how current technology is being utilized and implemented in the classroom.  Teacher and student feeback is crucial in evaluating the effectiveness of technology integration.

 

Membership of the committees also needs to be altered to make it more effective.  While it is important to have community representation on the committee, including parents, business managers, etc., it is also important to get more representation from areas that will be using the technology.  Including only one teacher and no students in the planning process is an extreme detriment to the committees.  A recommendation would be to include members from the various levels (primary, middle, and high school) as well as representation from the various departments at a high school level.  While a science or math teacher could provide insights into the best technology to use in those scientific environments, they have little insights on how technology could be integrated into an English or social studies classroom.  The same is true for high school teachers' uses for computers versus primary teachers' uses for computers.  Student represenation is important because students often know more about technology than their teachers and parents.  Therefore, they will be able to offer more insights on how much instruction is needed to use the technology in the classroom.

 

 

3.  Compared with your own environment, does Lotusville appear to be more or less effective in the way it plans for technology?

The Milton School District Technology Planning Committee consisted of the network administrator, the media director, the district curriculum coordinator, a member of the district technology deparment (aka technology secretary) and a high school English teacher.  The goals included increasing educator proficieny through leadership, instruction and consulting assistance in the use of instructional and information technology, providing effective teaching and learning practice services that makes "real world" connections, increasing student achievement through providing more access to information resources, and providing a wide range of resources to support state and district standards for systems support and leadership.  The goals included a lot of information on new technology initiatives and staff development.  While the vision, goals, and objectives are established (and more thought out than that of the Lotusville school district), there could be more follow-through on obtaining these goals.  Staff members should be aware of the technology plan and help aid in making it effective.  Overall, the Milton School District is more effective in the way it plans for technology than the Lotusville school district.

 

The Fort Atkinson School District seems to be less effective than the Lotusville planning model.  While the infrastructure is in place and is sufficiently meeting the needs of all staff at this time, any planning on a larger level than that seems to be nonexistent.  The district focus is on maintaining the hardware.  Aside from that, the technology planning defaults to local control in each building, where decisions can be made by an administrator about what can be purchased and how it will be utilized.  There is no overarching framework that governs these decisions.  There is also no process by which these purchases are monitored or evaluted for effectiveness.  Technology planning in this district is far behind the model presented in the Lotusville example.

 

The Maple Dale-Indian Hill School District also has an inefficient planning model. We have our hardware, and tend to be in a "maintain what we have" mode. The lack of planning at the district level leads into the lack of planning at the technology level. The lack of funds actually points to a greater need for planning, but administrators tend to react to problems, rather than plan for solutions and growth. The Maple Dale-Indian Hill strategy is no more effective than the Lotusville model. Better utilization of committees could help communicate vision, planning, and progress.

 

 

4.  If you were the district superintendent, what courses of action might you consider or recommend to the Planning Committee to help resolve some of the recent issues identified regarding instructional computing?

As several groups have stated above, the district superintendent should make some modifications to their current system.  First, the planning committee and advisory committees should include more members (especially adding teachers from the various levels and core departments).  Secondly, while those members are being chosen, there should be some type of needs assessment (similar to the enGauge survey) performed at all levels of the school district.  This would provide key insights into what is successful, what is needed, and what current attitudes are towards technology.  Third, the newly developed committee should create a vision with clear goals, objectives, and means of assessments using the information gathered from the surveys and from valuable feedback from the members of the committee that utilize technology in the classroom.  Again, these goals should be student-centered and staff development needs to be at the forefront of the discussion.  Goals and objectives should be assessed frequently, and the district superintendent should delay introducing more computers into regular classrooms until the committee assesses whether or not that would be not only utilized in a productive manner within those classrooms, but also provide benefits to student learning and achievement.

 

 

 

 

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 Rosanda Green, Penni Uribe, and Amanda (Simon) Wagner

 

1.      What observations can you make regarding the effectiveness of the planning process in the Lotusville school district?

First, the Planning Committee only has one teacher, that one being from the math department. The early (1987) computer classes were implemented through and were taught in the mathematics program, possibly because it was that teacher who was on the Planning Committee. Credit should be given for the district’s computer program having grown out of one department to a district-wide implementation. 

Second, a related, glaring problem is that ongoing staff development from the inception of the district’s beginning computer use to present is not even mentioned. Now, as the district considers adding more computers, staff development is mentioned almost as an afterthought. It seems that with enrollment increasing pretty rapidly, by about 110 new students per year, more computers are probably needed, along with staff development to enhance students’ learning via the use of computers.

2.      Do you have any suggestions for improving it? Consider especially the structure, membership of the committees, evaluation, and feedback.

Staff development time needs to be allotted for teacher computer training and even curricular planning to include technology. In fact, all the talk seems to be about microcomputers, not any other technological enhancements that might help aid student learning, since their test scores have been decreasing slightly.

In terms of the Planning Committee, perhaps some new perspectives are needed, as no change in the committee’s make-up is mentioned. If the same people have served since 1998, the committee members may be losing interest or, at worst, even stagnating with regard to the energy and new ideas they bring to the table. The Planning Committee definitely needs more representation by teachers, and it needs some new representation by students. Ultimately, it is students and teachers who mostly use the technology, so they should be bringing more to the Planning Committee discussions.   

The Advisory Committee seems to exist to perform checks and balances on the Planning Committee. How they evaluate or determine whether or not the decisions made by the Planning Committee have been effective is not stated. Somehow the superintendent gathers information, but how it is collected or what kind of information is gathered is unclear. Both committees and the superintendent should develop a more systematic way to measure many aspects of technology use, gathering input and feedback from everyone, from students to teachers to parents to computer coordinators to everyone involved with technology at all.   

3.      Compared with your own environment, does Lotusville appear to be more or less effective in the way it plans for technology?

Compared with our own environment, Lotusville appears to be relatively less effective than our district. By that we mean that for its size, Lotusville should be more manageable than our much larger district. Our district is very concerned with being financially equitable among schools rather than really studying various technologies’ impacts on student learning.  

4.      If you were the district superintendent, what courses of action might you consider or recommend to the Planning Committee to help resolve some of the recent issues identified regarding instructional computing?

The Lotusville district superintendent should recommend finding a way to measure whether or not the instructional technological expansion has been worth the investment. Perhaps, now that most of the infrastructure is in place, they don’t need a full-time technician; on the other hand, maybe they really do, but how will they know without close monitoring and measuring? Also, maybe it is time to evaluate whether or not they actually need more equipment or might they be able to restructure in some areas? Finally, is the Planning Committee itself keeping up with technological advances and formats, or are they stuck on the good old microcomputer? It is difficult to put a price on learning, but they won’t know where to focus their budgets if they don’t measure effectiveness in a variety of areas.

 

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1.      What observations can you make regarding the effectiveness of the planning process in the Lotusville school district?

·         The planning was effective by who was involved in the planning process. The district incorporated members from the administration, a teacher, community members, and a business leader.

·         The superintendent is actively involved with the planning process. He worked as the liaison between the community and the school district and has implemented a formal process for gathering information.

·         The planning committee created an advisory committee that involved different technology enriched parents, businesses, teachers, principal, and administration.

2.      Do you have any suggestions for improving it? Consider especially the structure, membership of the committees, evaluation, and feedback.

·         Incorporating more teachers on the committee allows you with the needs of the classrooms and schools in general. Along with those we would suggest involving the principals of each school in the district.

·         The evaluation process should incorporate more than the district superintendent. The other members and the advisory committee, which could have been involved with the planning committee more, could have made a plan together that focused on the school staff and the community. More people that are involved would cover a broader aspect of what should be given to everyone.

·         They do not mention where they are getting the information, what grade levels, etc.

·         Improving: involving the technology experts, professional development opportunities available to staff, what kind of support is available, and technology that is available for the teachers. They need to rework the vision and the plan to fit the district. It some how seems that they did not correctly implement a plan I the first place.

3.      Compared with your own environment, does Lotusville appear to be more or less effective in the way it plans for technology?

·         Looking at the computers to student ratio, the Lotusville school has 5,500 students to 450 microcomputers, primarily in computer labs and some in classrooms primarily in the high school.  Far less student to computer ratio then they should have for effectiveness.

o       My school of 192 students has 30 computers in one lab along with 2 computers in 12 classroom, the classes are guaranteed one media along with private time in the lab once a week. 

o       In Central M.S. have 670 students who use 2 labs with 30 computer in each. They also have 5 carts of wireless connection and 15 computers per cart. There is an average 3 personal classroom computer per classroom for 35 classrooms.

4.      If you were the district superintendent, what courses of action might you consider or recommend to the Planning Committee to help resolve some of the recent issues identified regarding instructional computing?

• Start by building a committee that involves people from the community, teachers, principals, administration, and local business that is actively involved with technology. This could be done by involving people from all the schools in the district.
• Gathering proper information to assist in creating a vision and a plan. Creating a survey of skills and technology knowledge, an inventory of software, hardware, and wiring, etc. needs to be done effectively to see where you are and where they have to go (or would like to go).
• Look into expanding computers and wiring for the entire district.
• Create staff development opportunities. Training the staff in proper techniques of incorporating technology into each class.
• Set goals for the staff and district.

 

** 3 Horsemen + 2 (Bob, Carl, Rob, Lisa, Kim) (sorry for late posting...network issues last night and today)

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