Needs+Analysis+02+Halcott

=Section 1 - Need Analysis Report=

Executive Summary
Lincolnway Elementary School is currently educating approximately 500 students in grade 2-5. Each grade level has 5 teachers and a LS teacher and LS aide. Grades 2-3 have 5 learning aides who shift from a 2nd to 3rd grade room to assist with reading workshop. Lincolnway currently has 2 administrators, a principal and a vice principal. Each building in the district has one teacher on a stipend to act as a technology coach in addition to their full-time responsibilities as a teacher. This person is responsible for assisting with basic troubleshooting, attending monthly technology team meetings to learn and disseminate information about district technology initiatives, and assisting with technology inventories. Currently Lincolnway is home to 1 computer lab with 32 computers, 1 color printer, and one black and white printer. In this lab there is a fixed smartboard and a mounted LCD projector. Outside of the lab; 4 multimedia carts, 2 smartboards, 4 digital cameras, 10 alphasmarts, a set of Turning Points response devices, and a portable lab (6 laptops in a Tupperware container) are available for teachers to sign out as needed. There are also 2 desk top computers assigned to each classroom and a black and white printer as well as a color printer in each hallway that teachers can access. All of the teachers, aides, administrators, and students are on varying levels of technology awareness and mastery. Training is given to faculty and staff by the District Technology Inservice Coordinator as recommended by upper administration, usually to introduce new programs being employed at the district level. New teachers enter a 3-year cycle of inservicing consisting of e-mail, report card, MMS, and Atlas training. Currently the building is adding 2 mounted LCD projectors, laptops, and a screen to 2 classrooms every year. This has been happening for 2 years and currently, the library, 1 third grade, and 1 fifth grade classroom are completely functional while another fourth grade classroom is waitng for a laptop in order to be functional.

Business Need
The technological knowledge of teachers in the building varies from classroom to classroom. Some teachers in the building are very comfortable using district technology, but many others have a limited proficiency in technology and struggle with programs used on a daily basis in the building to maintain communication and student progress. Some educators in the building enhance their lessons with powerpoints, create lessons using turning points software, employ smartboards, stream video and music, and use the internet for research and planning purposes, while others only use their classroom computers to check e-mail once a day and occasionally word process. Just as technology is varied for the educators at Lincolnway, the students’ exposure and usage of technology varies tremendously as well. In some classrooms students are taught how to word process, how to research on the internet, how to create powerpoint presentations, and utilize response devices to complete assessments. In others the classroom teacher doesn’t have the ability or the confidence to attempt enhancing lessons with technology. Even current administration’s mastery of technology is varied. The current building principal does not have mastery of technology and struggles to set up the media carts and upload documents, while the current assistant principal is at a high level of technology mastery and was the former building technology coach.

Learning Opportunity
The recommended solution is to hire a Technology Integration Specialist whose job description will entail co-teaching, co-planning, and assisting with technology enhanced lessons.

Expected Benefits
The creation of a Technology Integration Specialist position will enable teachers and students throughout the building are becoming increasingly aware of new and innovative technologies and methodologies. It will ensure that all students and teachers throughout the building are meeting the ISTE standards for teachers and students. It will also establish a base level of technology instruction that all students should receive at the elementary level.

Audience Analysis
The primary target audience is the teachers at Lincolnway Elementary. They have a wide-range of technological background. There are 5 teachers per grade level in grades 2-5, a math specialist, 3 reading specialists, an IST instructor, and 4 intinerant teachers; art, music, library, and physical education. A survey is being conducted to obtain information regarding teacher use of technology and comfort levels when teaching students how to use technology readily available within the building. A series of interviews will also be held with teachers on both sides of the technology spectrum to try pinpoint methods that would assist them in enhancing lessons with technology and ensure that all elementary students receive a basic level of technology exposure to better prepare them for success at the secondary level. The secondary target audience is the students of Lincolnway. This audience consists of approximately 500 students ranging from grades 2-5. These students have a vast array of exposure to technology usage and access to technology at school and home. A survey was conducted this summer to ascertain what technologies were available in students homes across the district which has confirmed that 80% of the student population has access to computers at home.

Project Design
The position of Technology Integration Specialist is being proposed at this time. This would be 1 professional staff member whose purpose is to assist teachers in the planning of lessons and ensure that technology integration is increased during daily instruction. For all general purposes this person would serve as a coach. The Technology Integration Specialist would assist in planning, preparation, and co-instruction of lessons designed to meet ISTE standards and current educational standards simultaneously. Teachers would plan with the Technology Integration Specialist on a rotating basis as needed to plan, implement, and co-teach lessons with integrated technology. The Technology Integration Specialist would have to scaffold instruction to meet the needs of the teacher and the classroom involved. In some rooms the Specialist may need to offer suggestions based on the existing curriculum to demonstrate ways technology might be used to enhance a lesson, in other cases the specialist may need to help a teacher refine and extend prior technology skills.

Project Success Measures
The specialist will be charged with designing a rubric that helps measure the school’s progress toward meeting ISTE standards and measuring the building’s growth towards meeting these standards. The specialist will also have to prove through equipment logs that the services being offered to teachers has increased usage, hence making the district’s purchase of these technologies more cost efficient.

Out of Scope
The ISTE Standards for administrators will not be addressed at all in this proposal and the ISTE standards for children will soley be addressed by attending to the ISTE standards of the teachers.

Estimated Project Costs
An educator would have to be trained to serve as a building technology integration specialist, or a technology Specialist, which would require training costs of $15,000-22,000 for a masters in instructional technology. In addition a new contract would need to be created at the starting teacher salary, or step 1 of the schedule, at an expense of $38,000 dollars the first year. This would mean the implementation costs would be approximately $53,000-60,000. Assuming that each classroom employed the assistance of the technology integration specialist, the benefit would be immediate with more students being presented with technology enhanced lessons, increased teacher collaboration, co-planning, and co-teaching of lessons. In the long run the technology available to sign out would be used on a regular basis and more students would be gaining rich, technologically enhanced lessons from 2 educators simultaneously. Most importantly, educators at the elementary level where technology education has not been a focus will receive one-on-one on-site training and assistance in their endeavors and with gained confidence and skills will most likely venture forward on their own to learn more about available technologies and implement technology enhanced lessons to the benefit of the students in their classrooms. This will also allow teachers at the secondary level to receive students with consistent background knowledge and mastery levels in technology. It is expected that the design and development phases of this project will take a considerable amount of time in order to create an elementary schedule of technology usage and to develop planning materials for the Technology Integration Specialist to use with the teachers being assisted, however the financial costs should be low at these phases in the project, other than the purchasing of software deemed necessary to instruct students. The method of evaluation would have to be constructed based on the ISTE standards and will most likely mirror a rubric. This assessment phase should cost very little but will require time for the Specialist to reflect on the program goals and survey teachers using the services to examine changing needs, successes, and needs for the program in the second and later years of the program. At this time the only other costs entailed in creating this position are the costs of training the technology Integration Specialist to ensure that the person fulfilling this position is knowledgeable on current best practices in technology instruction.