School Systems and Evaluations

¶ … County Educational Technology Plan 2014-2017 TIP 1: Vision, Mission, Goals and Strategies TIP 2: Needs Assessment TIP 3: The Planning Process State Goals and Objectives with Local Strategies and Measures Environment Engagement Tools TIP 4: Implementation: Timetable and Budget for Goals, Objectives and Strategies TIP 5: Executive Summary TIP 6: References TIP 1: Vision, Mission, Goals and Strategies of Imaginary County Public Schools The Imaginary County Public Schools District seeks to empower students with the latest technological resources and training to provide them with the knowledge to take advantage of educational and professional opportunities throughout their communities -- and the rest of their lives.

Vision: The vision of the Imaginary County Public Schools District is to enable students to become vital contributing members to the surrounding society with the most effective and modern methods indicative of the 21st century. Goals and Strategies Goal 1: Students must have a safe environment in which to learn and which fosters confidence, so that they can expand to attain their full potential in academic areas. It is crucial for students to be able to interact with others and their teachers so that they can become fully engaged.

Goal 2: To provision the students with the resources they need to succeed academically. There are a number of points of differentiation for students and their learning needs -- including cultural, learning, socio-economic differences, and more. The school must provide the sort of resources students need to account for their differences and to provide parity in their learning experiences. Goal 3: To determine student expectations for learning and exceed them.

Much like the fact that students have various points of differentiations in their needs, they also have different expectations for their learning capabilities. This school system seeks to identify those and actually challenge students to both attain those goals and to surpass them, when applicable. TIP 2: Needs Assessment Strengths -- What are the current strengths? The current strengths of the school district pertain to its faculty.

All of these individuals are highly trained professionals who have graduated from some of the most respected and renowned education programs from the surrounding community and state. As such, many of them are familiar with utilizing the sort of technological resources that will impact students from any variety of socioeconomic groups, special educational needs, and points of cultural diversity.

Furthermore, there is a fair amount of diversity within the faculty that attends to our students, which certainly helps students to see a working model of the way that diversity can contribute to society. Weaknesses -- What are the current weaknesses? The current weaknesses for this school district involve funding for "education technology" (Hogan, 2013, p. 4). Specifically, this particular district is one that offers education to the general public living within its borders. As such, it requires funding from the state and even federal resources, when available.

Therefore, it is constantly enduring cutbacks and lack of funding. There are issues with enhancement and extracurricular programs such as music and the arts in this district. There are also difficulties arising keeping teachers that are not tenured, since the district has incurred numerous financial difficulties that might require it to cut jobs in order to maintain its existence. Opportunities -- What are the future opportunities? The most eminent of the future opportunities for this district require some of the current cost-saving methods for utilizing technology in contemporary times.

Perhaps the most useful of these is the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon, in which students can bring their own smart phones, tablets, etcetera in order to utilize information technology resources while at school and in domestic settings for homework (Sangani, 2013, p. 42). There are even IT platforms that can be used to regulate device usage while in the classroom and help manage content on them (Harper, 2014 that's me!), to decrease the degree of distractions that these devices might tempt students with.

Furthermore, the cloud and cloud computing presents the district with a low-cost IT options in which it will only have to pay for resources when they are used, and which requires much less physical infrastructure. Threats -- What threatens those future opportunities? Unfortunately, those future opportunities are merely threatened by the same financial woes that are currently a bane to the school district. The strategy is to.