The Administration and Instructional Support area of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020

The Leadership, Administration & Instructional Support (LAIS) area of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology is the best area for reviewing how the campus perceives administration's leadership qualities with regard to integration of technology into the curriculum. The LAIS area helps a campus to define what it perceives the school's strengths and weaknesses are concerning technology leadership and vision of use, planning for use of technology, instructional support available to teachers, technology collaboration and communication among teachers, budget for technology use provided by the campus, and leadership & support for online learning activities.

According to statewide Texas School Technology and Readiness (STaR) summary data, trends in the LAIS area are generally improving. In 2005-06, the Early Tech level was at 4.3 percent of campuses -- 324, but by 2007-08, that level had dropped to 2 percent, or 150 campuses. Presumably these campuses that improved their level of progresss landed in the Developing Tech or Advanced Tech levels, since Advanced Tech campuses increased from 34.3 percent in 2005-06 to 45.5 percent in 2007-2008.

As a neophyte instructional technology student, my first recommendation to campuses wishing to improve their summary rating communicate with other schools in the district or other similar size schools statewide to see what solutions those schools have found to improving progress. Also, teachers need to be polled for feedback regarding their perceived notions of communication and collaboration levels within the school and district. Obviously adequate budget funding needs to be provided to support the level of technology use desired, but almost of equal importance is ensuring there are short- and long-range plans for integrating and using technology in the curriculum. These plans need to be supported by assessments that give accurate data concerning how successful technology integration has been. Finally, a recommendation I would offer is ensuring online learning opportunities are not only made available, but that administration has assessed the opportunities and helped teachers to make them suitable for completing to earn class credit.