By Mark Ambrogi
Carmel Clay Schools has a clear mission to enhance its use of technology in the schools.
It was part of the district’s strategic plan, a three- to five-year plan, adopted by the school board in June. Dr. Amy Dudley, assistant superintendent of curriculum, said one of the first action steps the district will take is to develop a technology integration plan. Dudley said stakeholders (teachers, administrators, parents and students) will review the research, look at the data and standards and the International Society for Technology in Education) standards.
“Then we’ll determine what our current practices are and our current state on the technology integration we have going on,” she said. “What our current strengths in the areas. We’ll look for our areas of growth and our needs. Then we’ll formulate those recommendations and look at short-term and long-term goals in those recommendations and then we’ll go to implement that plan.”
The stakeholders will review the different Learning Management Systems in place. Dudley said teachers have used Moodle and Edmodo for example. The goal is to determine one district-wide LMS.
Another goal of the strategic plan is to eventually have one instructional coach or interventionist in each school building.
“We’ll be implementing more interventionist coaches in (this) school year,” Dudley said. “Their job is not just technology integration. Their job is to work alongside of teachers to help teachers to look at what are those best practices they need to be put in place. They may be doing co-teaching. They may be doing model lessons. They may be doing professional development. They may be giving feedback to teachers. They may be modeling things with technology.”
