Technology+Survey+Summary+Group+6+S217

TaShara Eiland Kelsey Kennedy Michele Schafer


 * Hardware check **

The Hardware check between the three locations shows a very similar tread. The platform for all 3 schools was Windows. Two have Lenovo computers and one Dell. All three have different operating systems (Windows 7, Windows Professional 7 and Windows 10 Professional). When looking at the computer add-on devices the printer was standard in all cases. One location also had a document camera and projector. When looking at the basic configuration they were all Intel Core 8GB processors.


 * Software Check **

With regards to software available and used by the three schools, each location was very similar to the next. Multimedia authoring programs including Windows programs, and Adobe Acrobat. None of these locations had a limit as to what their site allow usage of regarding multimedia authoring programs. Internet programs use include; Youtube, Skype, and a variety of educational programs such as Quizlet and IXL. All three use Office 365 2013 as its main word processing program. Computer Assisted Instruction varied from the use of no assisted instruction by one school to more elaborate usages of assisted instruction including; text to speech, readers, CC, visual speech and therapy, social work, IXL, and Study Island. No statistical programs are used by each of the sites. With regards to software updates; one site updates their programs every month, another school updates their programs every summer, and the last school does not update.


 * Level of training and trained personnel check **

The level of training and the trained personnel seem to be left up to the educators at all three schools/workplaces. It is left up to the teacher to know how to use the computers with minimum training on school wide used programs like Blackboard. At one school/workplace all the administrators were trained to use the computers whereas the other two schools none of the administrators were trained to use the computers. All schools/workplace have a 1 to 1 computer/teacher ratio and all of the teachers/staff have personal computers at home. In 2 of the schools/workplace in-service training takes place a few times a year depending on platform changes and can range from 4 hours to 24 hours. The other one has had training six times in the last 3 years ranging from 2 hours to 5 days.

It seems pretty consistent between the schools/workplace that there is no specific evaluation in place that measures learning achievement specific to technology integration. Two groups answered Yes to believing that using technology in the classroom increases student learning and achievement. They know that it works by the end product (assignment) that is presented to the teacher after they have seen the task being done first using technology. Two thirds of the school/workplaces have a 1:1 student/computer ratio while the other school has a 2:1 student/computer ratio. For evaluation purposes one school/workplace has a hands on assessment of report retrieval done by the supervisors when deemed necessary while one other school has no evaluation in place. The other school has an evaluation in place by providing a computer class to students for a quarter of the school year everyday for 8 weeks, 50 minutes a day, evaluated by the computer instructors.
 * Evaluation process **


 * Do you feel the technology and support/training is adequate for your school/workplace? Why or why not? **

All three groups answered that they felt that the technology and support/training was not adequate for the school/workplace. The teachers were expected to know how to use the information on their own and also when something went wrong it is required that an outside agency had to fix the computer which could require a long time before things were fixed.

[|Comparison Chart of the Data Collected]