Texas Campus STaR Chart Presentation

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Texas Campus STaR Chart Presentation

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Teaching and Learning

The Teaching and Learning area of the Texas Long Range Plan for technology assures that all students are provided the same educational opportunities and experiences through rich content, peer communication, and expert collaboration. The learners will have online access to instructional resources, distance learning environments and other technology that allows building knowledge and skills. These are powerful technology tools that bring the world to the students’ fingertips no matter their location, socio-economic status, or size. It provides an equal education for all.

My school, where I have currently taught for 11 years, opened in 1997 before the Texas Long Range Plan was in effect. There have been noticeable improvements and progress in the area of teaching and learning during that time period. According to the campus STaR Chart Summary, our campus STaR chart classification was Developing Tech which corresponds to the state's progress with 70% of campus classified the same in the area of teaching and learning. However a National Education Technology Trends Study found that very few teachers report using technology to support weekly instruction.

My concerns are in the key area number 5, student mastery of technology TEKS, where our campus has remained at the Developing Tech level. According to the Texas Long Range Plan, our students should obtain mastery of these TEKs by the 8th grade. There have been progress made in the content areas but I am not sure this is accomplishing its task. Many teachers are still not prepared to incorporate technology into their content areas. I consider myself fairly technologically savvy and I still struggle with creating lessons that focus on my mathematics TEKS as well as incorporates relevant technology. If we are to improve students technology mastery, as well as, content mastery then more has to been done to help teachers. Curriculum from the district needs to be designed with the technology TEKS in mind. As for educators who embrace this technology, they will provide the essential 21^st Century skills our students will need for the future.