Needs Assessment
The Purple Pride School District (PPSD) is an urban/rural district with above average percent of low income families. Technology at students’ homes is not consistent from family to family, and for some of the students the only access to technology is at school. Staff and Administration also have contrasting ideas of what technology is and how it should be utilized in the classroom. Data from the Pennsylvania Technology Inventory (PATI) provides insight into the current district technology levels and the future needs.
The technology infrastructure PATI data shows that Purple Pride has built and maintains a sufficient network structure and high speed connection to the Internet. Files are secured for individuals and students and housed on redundant servers with daily backups. Network administration is handled by technicians responsible for each building. Student to computer ratio over the entire district is approximately 2:1 and is entirely PC. All computers are either high or mid capacity with high speed Internet access, Microsoft Office 2007, Macromedia bundle (Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Flash), and the Adobe CS4 Design Suite.
Teachers are required to use the Microsoft Office 2007 package and have basic skills in Outlook for email, Word for word processing, Integrade for grade books, and ClassXp for attendance. Elementary, Intermediate, and Middle School level teachers are facilitated by a half time integrator funded through the school district. High School teachers do not have a facilitator except for the ones involved in CFF who have a half time integrator funded through the state of PA. This will be the PPHS’s first year in the CFF grant which should increase technological integration at the HS level significantly considering the disjointed offerings currently available building wide.
There are several main concerns in technology for the PPSD. The first problem is Equal Integration of technology across the district. Currently, Elementary, Intermediate, and Middle School are the only areas where the district has pushed for integration. The High School has not been supported equally by the district in the past. Data from the PATI survey shows that teachers and administrators differ on their perceptions of both the amount of technological integration that happens in the classroom as well as the amount of training provided by the district. According to the results in section 6:Leadership of the PATI, 100% of administrators feel that teachers are expected to use technology regularly. Conversely, only 46% of teachers responded the same way (figure 6.1). The administrators also have the idea that teachers use specific standards related to 21st century skills to incorporate technology literacy (figure 6.4-6.7). In each case, teachers felt that this not only was not the case, but the complete opposite was true. Teachers do not have any basis for how or why these 21st century skills should be implemented. When asked if data [are] being collected to determine if technology is impacting students' 21st Century Skills, 100% of adminstrators answered no. (figure 9.3)
Based on these results, technology development plans will be created to increase the teachers awareness of what 21st Century Skills are, and the many ways that they can be implemented in the classroom. As a result, teachers in the PPSD will have the skills necessary to teach students who are digital natives.