Texas Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020

Teaching and learning is one of the four areas of the Texas Long-Range Plan for Technology. This area of the Plan focuses on how teachers and students use technology in the curriculum and classroom. The goal for this area, as in all areas of the Plan, is called Target Tech. At this level "the teacher serves as facilitator, mentor, and co-learner. Students have on-demand access to all appropriate digital resources and technologies to complete activities that have been seamlessly integrated into all core content areas, ..." (TEA, 2010 Progress Report on the Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020, p.10)

At Bridgeport Intermediate School, we are not quite to the Target Tech level in Teaching and Learning. We are at the level below called Advanced Tech, and have been for the last two years. At this level, the teacher is a facilitator and students work in groups to problem solve. Teachers at Bridgeport have made improvements in this area; moving up from the Developing Tech level we were at for the 2007-2008 school year. We are among the 30.5% of Texas teachers who reported themselves at this level for last year. (TEA, 2010)

In order for us to reach the Target Tech level for Teaching and Learning, we will need to have improvements in the infrastructure at our school. We do not have adequate bandwidth to have all of our students online all the time. We also need more computers if every student is to have on-demand to digital resources. The last improvement we would need is more effective professional development. I think our Technology group does a terrific job in keeping us up and running on the current software and hardware that we have access to as teachers. But, they are far too busy to provide us with the type of in-depth training we need to become comfortable as teachers at the Target Tech level.