School Technology Evaluation

Mountain Town High School Brian Nagy Boise State University

Demographics:

Mountain Town High School is the senior school of a school district that covers over 130 square miles in the Catskills ski region of New York. It encompasses several towns and sections of three different counties. The school is characterized as a low-income rural school with 33% of high school students eligible for free or reduced lunch assistance. Industry in the area is lacking. Much of the surrounding land is agricultural. Official demographics for schools in New York are released by the State Education Department annually, with a two-year delay. The most up-to-date numbers available are from the 20102011 school year. Total enrollment of Mountain Town High School is 517 with a slow trend of fewer students per 9th grade each year. In the 2010-2011 school year, the population of the school was lacking in racial diversity, a trend which continues to this time. Please see the graph for racial break-down. As with many rural schools that serve students of lower socio-economic status, graduation rates at Mountain Town is a concern. State-wide goals are for 80% of a cohort group to graduate in four years. The 2010-11 graduating cohort consists of the 133 students who entered 9th grade together in the 2007-8 school year. Of those, 78% graduated. When focusing only on students designated as being economically disadvantaged (46 of the 133, or 34.5%), the graduation rate drops to only 65%. Of those not graduating, 15 dropped out and 4 entered a GED program. The remainder continued on in the school or moved out of the district. The staff of Mountain Town High School includes 43 teachers, two guidance counselors, one principal and an assistant principal who is shared with the attached Middle School. According to state documents, more than 214 different classes ran in the 2010-11 school year.

Technology Maturity Assessment

Administrative Filter
The Administrative Filter deals primarily with those areas that students would think of as behind the scenes but are required for functional use of technology in a school setting

Policy: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Integrated Mountain Town Schools has a Technology Use Policy on the books. Thats roughly as far as it goes. Few teachers know the details of this policy, though they follow most of it simply because they think that such behavior is expected. Items such as teacher inability to install their own programs onto District Computers and software licensing rules are often glossed over by teachers. The policy, as it exists, is quickly becoming out-dated. It discusses technologies not found in any current computers or classrooms (floppy disks, laser disks, etc.). An attempt by the Systems Administrator to update the policy several years ago did not progress past his suggestion during a Technology Committee meeting that the policy needs upgrading. Planning: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Islands Technology planning at Mountain Town High School is limited and scattered. The Systems Administrator is intimately tied to all implementation. His goal has been longterm integration of all purchases into a cohesive environment. These goals are stymied by competing personalities among administration as well as budgetary constraints. The availability of funds (discussed below) is unreliable and hard to predict, making long-term planning difficult. Plans are in place for areas: computer lab upgrades, potential purchase of Chrome books or mobile devices for much of the school, etc, but is likely to change. Budget: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Emergent Current economic conditions and dwindling funding from the state are causing budgetary concerns throughout the district. Technology purchases are officially put on hold per Board of Education action. This includes a money-saving replacement service that the district had been on. Despite this mandate from the Board, technology purchases seem to continue anyway, though at a much slower pace. There is a level of school aid returned to districts for technology purchases. The money is given the following school year, so there is always some money ear-marked for technology purchasing that came as aid from the prior year. Money is always found if the need requires it. Mountain Town Schools has also sought out competitive grants for technology purchases.

Administrative Information: Behavioral: IntelligentResource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Access to administrative software is a requirement for all administrators, teachers and office managers. Mountain Town uses PowerSchool for student data management. On the teacher side, it provides grade entering and attendance. It is also used for scheduling, storing demographic information and tracking discipline and parent contact by the main office and Guidance department.

Curricular Filter:
The Curricular Filter involves the use of technology in student learning: providing content as well as assessing student learning. Electronic Information: Behavioral: IntegratedResources/Infrastructure: Integrated In particular, staff make regular use of the internet for planning and instruction. Students have ample ability for accessing e-resources. Access to online resources is nearly ubiquitous for all staff and students. The school hosts a wiki environment for teacher pages as well as Google-hosted Google Drive for students and staff to create their own sites. Every classroom has at least one computer. In the high school, there is a standalone computer lab with room for 25 students. There is also a 25-student lab in the Media Center (Library) in addition to two mobile labs: 20- and 25-laptop carts setup for printing and charging. Wireless internet access is available in all areas of the campus for ease of use of mobile devices. Assessment: Behavioral: EmergentResource/Infrastructure: Islands Assessment is still paper-based at Mountain Town High School. New technology was purchased this year for student assessment to coincide with new teacher evaluation systems that require integration of student scores. Most teachers use this technology (eDoctrina) to create multiple-choice bubble sheets similar to what would be seen on state assessments. Tests created in this system are not tied to curricular goals as they could be. Often, the actual questions arent even uploaded to the e-Doctrina system. This system allows for online, paperless assessments and item-analysis linked to learning standards, but these are largely ignored. PowerSchools grade book also provides tie-ins to a teachers curriculum map, but it isnt being leveraged to this end. Curriculum Integration: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Integrated As new resources become available, the teachers of Mountain Town High School have been slowly integrating them into their instruction. There seems to be a dividethough there is no objective distinctionbetween groups that are very willing to try new technologies in the classroom and those who are resistant. That being said, there are some who rely heavily on technology for instruction, including webquests, interactive whiteboard activities, and online simulations. Those teachers who are enthusiastic about technology use sometimes have difficulty seamlessly integrating into instruction and rather use it as reinforcement instead of direct instruction. Some of the technology is not universally available for all teachers. Manycurrently only math, science and social studiesclassrooms now have document cameras hooked up to their overhead LCD projectors. These cameras have been leveraged in several ways: replacements for old overhead projectors, used for demonstrations, showing of student exemplars, experiments, etc. Only four classrooms of 26 have interactive white boards

and two of them are permanently attached to the wall and therefore are unavailable for use by other teachers. Teacher Use: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Integrated As previously mentioned, teacher use falls on a continuum that is heavily skewed to the extremes: either frequently or almost never. There is a population of teachers who only begrudgingly utilize technology for the requisite purposes of attendance, grade reporting and email. Others use it oftensome, to the point of being lost in the event that things dont work. Staff members are given ample access to computers and technology. For planning purposes, classroom computers can be used as well as a bank of six computers in the teachers work room. In addition, many in-class resources are mobile (on carts) and can be easily brought to most classrooms. Student Use: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Integrated Student computer use for learning also falls on a continuum. It can range from research and typing a paper to more in-depth and engaging instructional purposes. Their use for educational purposes is sporadic and relies greatly on having teachers who are comfortable with the technology themselves. In addition to class-time use, the Media Center lab is available during most times of the day for students to use during their free periods. This time is not always used to the most productive ends as roughly 50% of those observed spent some to most of their time using Google to conduct searches unrelated to their work or to play games online.

Support Filter:
The Support Filter deals with the access to help and training in the technologies used by teachers throughout the instructional day. Stakeholder Involvement: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Emergent The major stakeholders in the technology environment of Mountain Town School Districtthe teachers and studentshave little to do with implemented changes. This isnt because they dont have the opportunity, but rather choose not to take part in the process. The System Administrator (one of only two full-time professionals in the district who work with the computer systems) makes every effort to inform teachers of the implementation and planning of new technology, but his communications go largely ignored and teachers lose out the opportunity for providing feedback.

There is Technology Committee that meets sporadically. Regular attendees include the High School principal, the System Administrator, the principal of one of the elementary schools and a rotating cast of teachers whose ranks rarely include elementary or middle school teachers. Administrative Support: Behavioral: IslandsResources/Infrastructure: Integrated The school principal is generally supportive of technology integration and supports teachers who want to add to their teaching repertoire. That being the case, the hit-andmiss nature of resources, as well as the duties of his position make follow through inconsistent. The principal of the high school is, however, a regular attendee of the Technology Committee, so he does keep the pulse of the few interested parties. Training: Behavioral: IslandsResources/Infrastructure: Islands As new systems and resources and implemented in the district, teachers get some level of training. Sometimes it is limited to an overview by someone with more training (an official trainer or a staff member who is acting as a turn-key trainer) during a large-group session with later opportunities for smaller-group training. Other time, trainings are built into mandatory meetings or professional development days. There is also a general ecosystem of one-on-one training on an as-needed basis from someone the tech support team (System Administrator, Hardware Administrator and FrontLine staff). Technical & Infrastructure Support: Behavioral: IslandsResources/Infrastructure: Intelligent The tech support team has a rich ecosystem for receiving, recording and commenting on help tickets. Teachers and administrators create help tickets by sending an email to the system. As changes are made, the system gets updated to keep all interested parties upto-date on the status of the issue. Each school in the district has a FrontLine staff membera teacher who receives a stipend to help out with tech support much like a triage nurse: fix the easy problems, pass on the harder ones to the appropriate specialist. There are only two full-time computer professionals for a 4 school, 3-campus district, so their time is split and they are not always available. Because of this and the fact that FrontLine staff are fellow teachers, the help system is not always used to its full potential by other teachers. They prefer the more immediate and face to face interaction of asking for help in person

Connectivity Filter:
The Connectivity Filter deals with the ability of the institution to successfully communicate within and without the building. The average user would simply refer to this filter as the internet connection. Local Area Networking: Behavioral: IntelligentResource/Infrastructure: Integrated

The High School was rewired for more efficient networking over the last two summers. Each classroom and office now has a voice over internet protocol (VOIP) phone for inhouse phone calls. This network connects to a landline POTS system for outgoing calls. The high-speed connection of over 1 Gbps allows for resource-reliant services like VOIP through Google Voice as well as video creation and streaming. The internet connection does not go to every site. A free filtering service known as DansGuardian cuts out inappropriate content and non-instructional sites (specifically social networking and gaming sites) are blacklisted. District Area Networking: Behavioral: IntelligentResource/Infrastructure: Intelligent The districts three campuses run roughly in a straight line with the High School/Middle School campus in the center. All traffic from the other schools is routed through high speed fiber-optic cables from the elementary schools to the high school where all servers for the district are located. Support staff have shared servers in the high school with no loss of service regardless of what site they are accessing from. All teacher and student accounts are stored in the high schools servers. Internet Access: Behavioral: IntegratedResource/Infrastructure: Intelligent All computers in the district have access to the internet. Internet resources are used by staff and students regularly for research and instruction. For staff, email communication, grade recording and even attendance require an internet connection. Communication Systems: Behavioral: IntelligentResource/Infrastructure: Intelligent Email has been widely used in the district for more than ten years. In the past four years, all email services have been ported to G-mail (much like Boise States own BroncoMail Is hosted on Googles servers). This provides more general stability and universal access as well as making it easier to access email with mobile technology. All faculty, staff and students are provided with an email address.

Innovation Filter:
The Innovation Filter deals with the turnover for integrating new technologies and making them key parts of the environment. New Technologies: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Islands The opportunity to test new technology is limited. Decision makers in the district do not generally push adoption of new technology just because it is new, but rather because it would enhance the learning experience for Mountain Town students. When there is an opportunity, the Systems Administrator tends to pick Test Teachers from a list of usual suspects to pilot the technology and provide feedback. When other teachers see something new in use and get to talk about it with a fellow teacher, they are more

responsive than if It was just thrown at them. There are, as always, certain staff members who are resistant to anything new. Comprehensive Technologies: Behavioral: IslandsResource/Infrastructure: Integrated Over time, technology in Mountain Town High School has become ubiquitous. With few exceptions, almost all classes have LCD projectors ceiling mounted and connected to the classroom computer as well as an audio receiver and VHS/DVD player. Document cameras are being deployed to new classes every month. Digitizing and scanning technology has recently been deployed as part of the e-Doctrina roll-out and as part of a new copy machine. Integrating the technology into instruction is forth-coming. The support is there and the devices needed are becoming more and more prevalent.

Summary
It is difficult to assign a technology maturity benchmark stage to Mountain Town High School. On almost all framework subcategory, it falls either in Islands or Integrated. Even assigning a numerical value of 1-4 to each stage of each subcategory gives a mathematical average of exactly between Islands and Integrated. Given no other choice, it makes sense to err on the side of the positive and label the school as being in the Integrated Stage. The staff in charge of providing and supporting technology in the school has made big changes given the limit of their resources. The school is in better condition with technology than much larger schools within the same general region of New York State, though there remains work to be done to create an environment where technology is a seamless part of the culture. Technology is supported and is being introduced as actively as possible in the school. With laptops and desktops, there is approximately one computer for every five students in the school, but that may soon change. The school is in competition for a grant that would provide the infrastructure and hardware for a one-to-one deployment of some computing device to all students and teachers in the district. Teacher buy-in for this and other technology is a mixedbag. Some are quick to try new things and some dismiss everything outright. The schools score would increase if those who resist could be persuaded to incorporate technology into their routine. Another hindrance is money. While in an ideal school, budgeting for technology would be a priority, dwindling income and increased costs for other budget items (salaries, health care, cost of purchases services), concessions need to be made. One aspect of technology maturity not addressed by the rubric is the availability of training for students and their access to technology outside of school. The demographics of the district tend to mean a lack of access to technology once the school day has ended. Many students enter high school with low skills for technology utilization. This changes the environment as much as teacher buy-in. Students who do not have the skill set for technology utilization are often reluctant to try for fear of failure with a tool that others can use with ease.

Works Cited:
New York State Department of Education (2012). The New York State school report card: Accountability and overview report 2010-11. New York State Department of Education (2012). The New York State school report card: Comprehensive information report 2010-11.