Texas Long Range Plan for Technology

The Texas Long-Range Plan encompasses a very diverse yet integrated group of initiatives that when have come to fruition will accomplish the scholastic success that was envisioned. I believe that my district and campus has adopted this Plan and begun to implement it successfully. I am convinced of this and will discuss how I’ve personally felt like an integral part of this Plan. This Plan was designed with great collaboration and inclusion in mind. One of the critical areas of the plan involves Teaching and Learning. I believe this is an area of critical need because trends show minimal, slow growth whereas I believe growth should be occurring almost exponentially. The paradigm of the classroom must remain fluid and open to student-led alliances and that responsibility lies in the changing job description of the educator. In compliance with that modification, learners must too become responsible for their learning. Collaboratively, this model must provide roads that focus on real world connectivity and reflection. On the state level, the progress occurred by one tenth of a percent each year between 2006 and 2009. This trend is crucial if this movement is to take off. When the administration and infrastructure are the support and are at the level of growth charted in the trends, it’s not hard to imagine that Teaching and Learning will fall in line. At this point, if growth does not catapult its evidence that there is a stifling breakdown between the leadership, preparation and teaching components. For example, the trend in this area went from 14, down to 12, then back up to 14 which means we will have trouble moving past the development stage to that of advanced. Though our instructional support is there, there is a lack of ability for the educators to get on board. I believe if professional development served as a more convincing model of this shift in student-led learning and provided more ideas and examples, educators would experience what they hope the students should experience. It is imperative that this be modeled consistently in developments or else the facilitators won’t buy into the process.