See also, The Components of a Technology Use Plan document, A Template for international schools.
I. Statement of the Problem
This document is intended as a guideline which an international school or an American school overseas might use for adopting a Technology Use Plan.
Despite variations, there are a number of features that international schools have in common. Among the special circumstances that deserve consideration are the following conditions, which exist in most of these schools:
Some of the overseas American schools, and international schools, have adapted Technology Use Plans already. There are many, however, that have never developed a clear, long-range document for implementing technological change. It would be advantageous to develop a plan which might serve as a guideline for international schools attempting to adopt a long-range plan for technology.
Many schools, both in the United States and abroad, plan for technological growth on the basis of specific requests for expansion. A plan, such as there is, may be a patchwork of plans for individual departments.This approach has obvious limitations. Primarily, it does not assure that teachers who lack computer knowledge will ever acquire it. Secondarily, it does not give the school board and the business office even an estimate of financial demands that will develop over the next few years. If, in the long run, we want an even distribution of computers wherever they may be used, we cannot wait for teachers in all departments and all grade levels to come up with the training and demand on their own. Also, in the long run, if the board does not have a good estimate of the eventual need for computers and other technological installations, they will neither seek nor commit the necessary funding. For both to be assured, a general plan for a five-year commitment, and a more specific plan for the next one year, must be arranged.
Several technology use plans have been developed for stateside schools. In an effort to make use of the best of plans already invented, I have referred in particular to two documents. One is the Technology Use Plan for the Tulare City School District, developed during the 1995-96 school year. The other document, Guidebook For Developing an Effective Instructional Technology Plan was developed under the direction of Dr. Larry Anderson, Professor of Instructional Technology at Mississippi State University. (I obtained it from Seth Ruef, Computer Coordinator at the American International School of Luxembourg, where the document is being used for a guideline for developing a five-year plan.) Both of these documents were developed for stateside schools. In these pages, I have taken these plans and adapted them to the needs common to international schools.
This project will assume some of the conditions inherent in English language international schools and devise a generic plan that a school outside of the United States might use in updating technologically.
In addition, I have inquired among colleagues in the international schools for insights into the problems they have encountered in planning for technology. Special thanks for helpful responses in this regard go to Seth Ruef, Computer Coordinator at the American International School of Luxembourg, to David Bucknell at the New International School of Thailand, Monica E. Mueller, Computer Coordinator for the International School Hamburg, Germany, who gave me some insights into obstacles to avoid, and Martin Suey, Technology Teacher in the Tulare City School District.
II. The Context for Change
The purpose of a Technology Plan is to formalize and document the vision of educators concerning how to implement technology for instructional and administrative use. The plan also assures that there will be even development across all grades and equal access for all students. A plan assures that installations of technology do not go in sporadic surges of spending in uneven stages for different parts of the school system. It also gives those responsible for budgetary planning a document from which they may anticipate requests for funds for technological growth.
The Technology Plan also offers several measures of progress in what are called a "Technology Resources Survey," which anyone can survey afresh each year to determine whether progress is being made. These surveys do not just inventory the equipment, but assess the levels of teacher use and student access. Turned into charts, it should be possible to show graphical comparisons, year by year, of whether the school is progressing in using technology. In international schools, where administrative personnel may turnover frequently, it is important that the surveys and the charts should be simple enough so that any team of personnel on the Technology Committee should be able to duplicate the gathering of data for the sake of creating new charts displaying the current level of usage in order to see if progress is really taking place. The Plan should also be flexible enough to allow changes of specific projects, without aborting the overall vision.
An important goal in the development of a Plan is to make all of the teachers feel that they have a part in this process, and that they welcome the changes as being part of a process that they participated in bringing about. It is hoped that teachers will see the development of a Technology Plan as a classroom-oriented structure, which will ultimately bring to the classroom the devices and connectivity which teachers can use, and to the teacher the training that will help them to use it.
A. Assessing Stages of Concern
There is widespread acceptance that technological innovations will play an increasing role in education. Administrators in international schools generally hope to make their schools exemplary in performance, and generally want their schools to have the level of technological achievement expected in an expensive private school. Before moving too quickly, however, it would be wise to assess the level of acceptance among members of the staff.
One of the documents which was used as a model here, the Technology Use Plan of the Tulare City School District, includes some suggestions for a survey of the teaching staff concerning their own level of use of computer equipment and various applications. In addition to this, it would be helpful to determine the level of resistance or acceptance among the teachers. For example, it is likely that many teachers in the international schools recognize that they should be learning more about the uses of technology, but have serious reservations about their own adequacy, or about the administration's commitment. This will be especially important when it comes to organizing staff inservice, since teachers may acknowledge a need for more instruction on the uses of technology, but find other things to do when the inservices are scheduled.
Consider, for example, that members of the staff in many schools outside of the United States do not have access to computers at home, may not have access to practical modem connections, and may not have classroom computers in the school. Many of these teachers have been out of the USA for many years; many have never lived in a technologically rich country.
It is important that those responsible for initiating the process for adopting a Technology Use Plan establish a procedure for determining the Stages of Concern among the teaching staff. It is for this reason that the Teacher Survey (Appendix 5) includes a line for comments, and some lines for narrative comments. This is to invite expressions of concern about these responses.
In addition, it is advisable to arrange for several short forums for discussion which will invite discussion about adoption of computers and other innovations. Faculty meetings might be the place, but in some schools faculty meetings do not offer the opportunity for open discussion. Teachers, unfortunately, may be nervous about speaking up. In this, the Coordinator should be attentive to the right opportunity for frank input from teachers about their concerns. It may be necessary to network the staff for informal discussion, inviting honest feelings. In this regard, it is important that the Coordinator make the teachers feel that he/she is not judging them, is not reporting to the central bureau about their professionalism, but that he is a peer who is there to help. A level of trust is important here because the Coordinator needs to know how open to change the teachers really are. The Timeline (which is a part of Appendix 1) includes a suggested Forum for Teacher Discussion of Technology Directions, for teaching staff to express honest concerns about advances in technology in their programs.
Informal interviews with teaching staff and also classified staff may help to ascertain the reservations which staff may have concerning advancing technology. The Technology Coordinator may choose to give some advice to administration on using informal conversations for learning about the concerns of their staff. It is important that administration know about the stages of concern among staff in order to determine whether progress is involving all members of the community.
If all else fails, a questionnaire about teacher concerns about computers may be in order. However, a paper survey should be considered the last resort. Honest discussion is far more trustworthy in gathering this data.
These questions should be among those asked by the Coordinator or by members of the administration, of teachers, whether this occurs in open meetings or in casual discussions in the hall:
It might be useful for the Coordinator to jot down some of the responses to these questions and make a chart showing "stages of concern" of the teaching staff. This chart could be useful in determining, a year or two later, how much progress there has been in teacher acceptance of technology. It is important, however, that the Coordinator does not alarm anyone about how he/she is using the information gathered from these casual conversations. The Coordinator must remain a peer and adviser to the teachers -- never an evaluator.
In addition, members of the Board must be interviewed for their views on technology. The Coordinator should question Board members to ascertain the Stages of Concern among these leaders. The Vision Statement and Philosophy will mean more if they are developed with members of the Board participating.
B. Establishing Current Levels of Use
Members of the District Technology Committee should conduct a survey to establish the overall level of acquisition of technology throughout the school/district. (Suggested survey components are a part of Appendix 4, The Technology Resources Survey.) However, it is desirable to involve as many individuals as possible in this part of the assessment, as a way of distributing ownership of the project. Also, it is desirable to have members involved in the surveys who have a year or more of experience with the staff and their uses of technology. Since the turnover of staff and administration in some schools is high, it is also desirable to have members who will be around for this survey in coming years.
The Technology Resources Survey should be repeated each year, with the results graphed in some manner that displays, at a glance, the progress of the uses and resources of technology over the years. Each of the charts below can be converted into an appropriate graph. The exact appearance of the graphs should be designed according the size of the school and other circumstances.
III. Formulating a Description of the Innovations to be Implemented
The model documents of Technology Use Plans have some concise sections that need to be there. These sections (described in part A, below, and in Appendix 1, A Template for International Schools) have the purpose of formulating the visions of where the school/district intends to go with technology, and also of providing a survey of background information from which to measure progress in the next few years.
Among the early tasks of the Coordinator will be to meet with members of the administration, preferably the Superintendent, to determine members of a Technology Committee. In these discussions, it must be understood by administration that this process has its best impact if the document is not simply an instrument handed down to the teaching staff after administrative -- inside -- discussion. It must be a document that all feel a part of, all feel welcome to contribute honest feelings and suggestions to, and which all will feel ownership of during the period of implementation of its components. It is for this reason that the Timeline (part of Appendix 1) and the surveys (Appendices 4 and 5) include meetings, surveys, and suggestions for informal discussion, which are intended to involve all members of teaching staff.
A. Innovation Configuration with Components
The Technology Use Plan document should include the following components. Detailed description of each component is offered in Appendix 1, "The Components of a Technology Use Plan document."
Section 1 a statement of the Audience being addressed by this document,
Section 2 Statement of Purpose,
Section 3 a Timeline covering the coming year,
Section 4 Technology Support Personnel and Committee Membership, in which the members of the committees and administration are named,
Section 5 Table of Contents,
Section 6 Executive Summary,
Section 7 a Vision statement,
Section 8 Philosophy ,
Section 9 Findings, which includes results of the surveys of staff and review of the resources available and suggested projects to be implemented,
Section 10 Recommendations , regarding Policy, Organizational Issues, and a Technology Projects Overview,
Section 11 Evaluation, describing methods for determining the level of success of the innovation.
IV. Intervention Plan
A. General Approach-Overview of One Year Plan
Initially, the Technology Coordinator must meet with the Superintendent, the Principals, and members of the Board, to discuss the scope and purpose of the project, to begin the Vision Statement and Philosophy, and to establish membership of a Technology Committee.
A Timeline of the first year's activities in drawing up the initial plan is included. See Appendix 1, A Template for International Schools, Section 3. This Timeline includes the appointment of members to the Technology Steering Committee, guidelines for whom to include in the greater Technology Committee, and meetings for discussion of the issues, distribution of the surveys, analysis of data, completion of the drafts of the Technology Plan, presentation to the board and to the community, and evaluation.
The Timeline does not include the more subjective effort of networking teaching staff, classified staff, board, administration, community, parents, and students, which must be going on continually, as a matter of fact finding, perception of concerns, and spreading a feeling of ownership of the project.
Beyond the first year, a review of procedures, gathering of updated information, and discussion of new projects must be pursued. That is discussed in part E, below.
B. Rationale
The Technology Plan formalizes and documents the vision of educators concerning how to implement technology for instructional and administrative use. The plan also assures that there will be even development across all grades and equal access for all students. A plan assures that installations of technology do not go in sporadic surges of spending in uneven stages in different parts of the school system. It also gives those responsible for budgetary planning a predictable source from which to plan for financial requests for technological growth.
The Technology Plan also offers several measures of progress in what are called a "Technology Resources Survey," which anyone can survey afresh each year to determine whether there is progress being made. These surveys do not just inventory the equipment, but assess the levels of teacher use and student access. Turned into charts, it should be possible to show graphical comparisons, year by year, of whether the school is progressing in using technology. In international schools, it is important that the surveys and the charts should be simple enough so that any team of personnel on the Technology Committee should be able to duplicate the gathering of data for the sake of creating new charts displaying the current level of usage in order to see if progress is really taking place.
C. Strategies, Stages, and Steps
With a view toward the above goals, the Technology Coordinator approaches members of the Board, the Superintendent, the Principals and other administrators responsible for curriculum development, members of the teaching staff, librarians, and members of the classified staff, with an effort toward communicating to all players in the school the purpose of the planned document, and to gather information from everyone as to the needs, visions, and hesitations that they have regarding technology.
The Technology Coordinator develops a Timeline for planning the document, supervises the drafting of the document, schedules the meetings (with support from one of the administrators, since there is generally one person on the campus responsible for scheduling.)
The Technology Coordinator must be watchful that all members of the school community feel a part of this planning process, and watches for the possibility of pockets of alienation among members of the school. For example, it is possible that members of the classified staff may begin to complain that this process did not take into consideration their feelings on subject, and their needs. The Technology Coordinator is the one responsible for making adjustments in the Technology Committee membership, or in the gathering of data, to incorporate input from all members of the school community.
For this same reason, it is the Technology Coordinator who must meet from time to time with the representatives from each component of the school to assure that no campus, no grade level, nor any department, has become detached from the process.
The Technology Coordinator must also see that the necessary administrators in charge of financing are kept involved in the project. In international schools this function may be a part of the board functions, or there may be a Business Manager. In any case the Technology Coordinator should assure that those financially responsible parties are somehow kept in communication. Typically, one or more of the administrators have an open channel of communication with the person responsible for financial planning. The Technology Coordinator should check from time to time to see that that avenue of communication is in touch with the developments of the Technology Plan.
D. Players, Roles, and Responsibilities
The Technology Coordinator
This should be a teacher or administrator with considerable experience in teaching with computers, and/or with keeping school records with computers, and with some understanding of the design, costs, and physical requirements of networking, installation of computers, and design of a successful class, library research facility, and school record-keeping system. The responsibility of the Technology Coordinator during the first year of developing the plan is to set a timeline for meetings and development of the surveys, and to oversee the authorship of the draft and final versions of the plan.
District Technology Steering Committee Membership
The purpose of the Steering Committee is to assure communication of the purpose and intent of this document and to see that each component of the school is involved in the process. This must include, but not be limited to, one member representative of each of the follow institutions:
Board -- One member from the Board who has some experience with technology and a special interest in seeing technology expanded in the schools should serve on the committee to assure communication with the Board on the purpose and progress of this project.
Principal -- Any one of the Principals representing any one level of instruction on any campus should be involved with the Steering Committee. It is important the this Principal should be one familiar both with instructional uses of computers and school office record-keeping systems.
Classified Staff -- One member from either the secretarial staff or the office which keeps records relating to the operations of the school. (In some international schools this function belongs to the Counseling Department.) This member should be familiar with the needs of the secretarial or counseling staff regarding the uses of technology in school records.
Teaching Staff -- One teacher with considerable familiarity with the uses of technology in the classroom, or the computer lab, or the library media center, should represent the views of teachers in designing a plan.
Curriculum Coordinator, or equivalent administrator -- This person assures that the technology implemented has application to the curriculum and assures that there is even development across all areas of the school.
Technology Consultant from the community -- In most cases, the school will not have anyone on the staff who understands in depth the technical requirements of networking, the current costs and the current technological gadgets necessary to carry off a successful installation. In such cases, it is essential to hire a qualified consultant, such as an engineer, local technology dealer, or other technology person to advise the educational staff about the feasibility of the installations which educators describe.
Parent -- This person may be one and the same as a representative from the board. In either event, it is advisable to have an active parent -- one who communicates considerably with administration, teachers, and other parents -- to become a part of this process.
Technology Coordinator -- Qualifications and responsibilities are described above, section D.
District Technology Committee Membership
The Technology Committee drafts the plan, distributes the surveys and interprets results, and assures distribution of the final draft and oversees implementation on the part of the school from which each member is drawn. The Technology Committee must include the above District Technology Steering Committee membership, but also includes:
One Representative from the teaching staff of each component school in the District. In international schools, this would normally be one representative from the high school, one from the middle school, and one from the elementary. In cases where there are separate campuses in different locations, there must be one representative from each level from each campus. The responsibility of these members is to assure input from all levels and school sites regarding the development of the plan, to report to their respective colleagues the developments and directions of the project, and to assure distribution of the final plan. In the future, these people will help with reviewing the plan from year to year to measure progress.
E. Sequencing of Effort
It is not enough to simply install a Technology Plan, and expect the changes to follow automatically. In order to assure that the technology is getting used properly, a follow-up plan should reassess the level of technology each year to compare progress from year to year.
The Technology Plan offers several measures of progress in what are called a " The Technology Resources Survey," which anyone can survey afresh each year to determine whether there is progress being made. These surveys do not just inventory the equipment, but assess the levels of teacher use and student access. The surveys produce data which allow the Committee to compare, year by year, to see if the school is progressing in using technology. The charts should be simple enough so that any team of personnel on the Technology Committee should be able to duplicate the gathering of data for the sake of creating new charts displaying the current level of usage in order to see if progress is really taking place.
In the first year of the implementation, a document is drawn which formalizes the vision of technological development. Of course, there are likely to be changes in goals during the first year. New technological devices develop; some devices become obsolete before they are even old. New shifts in direction are likely to occur before full implementation happens.
It is for this reason that the plan includes a mechanism for yearly review by the Technology Committee. In international schools, the members of the Committee may be new people filling the positions of former members vacated as personnel move on. It is important that the incoming personnel accept their function on the Technology Committee, as part of the job description of their position. It is important that these individuals carry on the yearly review of the Technology Plan to see the level of progress regarding the original vision of where everyone said they wanted to be heading during the original survey. It may be that certain parts of the plan, certain projects, have changed in nature from year to year. As the Committee meets the following year to review the projects (Section 9 of the Technology Plan Template) they should make revisions within the individual projects recommended, but NOT in the overall structure of the Technology Plan. The survey questions are designed to show whether there is progress; the specific project goals are not in themselves the end object.
Goal
The Timeline shown in Appendix 1 states January of the first school year as the deadline for submitting a final draft of the first year's version of the Technology Plan. This means that the initial discussions among administration, board, and parents, must be accomplished early in the year, immediately before school is in session. Teachers, who are usually preoccupied during the first month of school in preparing their immediate classroom needs, should be spared from time-consuming responsibilities until October. In any variation of this structure, it is recommended that the initial surveys be completed by early November and that the data be analyzed by early enough in December so that a final draft of the plan can be ready for presentation in January. This gives sufficient time for staff to discuss the meanings of the project proposals and the recommendations of the document, and to view its contents regarding the current state of technology in the school. By the beginning of the second school year, those participating (which should include all teaching staff) should be familiar with its contents and ready for another round of recommendations and project proposals.
Objective
The completed document, the Technology Use Plan should be a statement which includes...
(1) statements of the vision, philosophy, responsible participants, commitment and purposes of technological innovations,
(2) background information and survey data which show the levels of use, resources available, and levels of training and extent of installation during the first year,
(3) desired projects and goals held by teaching staff, administration, board, and community, and
(4) a plan for review and revising, which can be adopted by any personnel in the district in the following years, even if the names of the participants change, as they so often do in international schools.
Go To: Appendix 1, The Components of a Technology Use Plan Document, A Template for International Schools.
Go To: Appendix 2, Questions to be considered.
Go To: Appendix 4, The Technology Resources Survey.
Go To: Appendix 5, A Teacher Survey of Technology Utilization.
Go To: Appendix 6, The Four Stages of Technology Use