Technology survey results – Chapter 2

On the survey participants were asked to answer the following question:

What needs to change in regards to technology and technology access in the Kenton City School District? How would you recommend enacting this change?

I’m going to highlight a few of the responses and try to clear up some problems and misconceptions:

Much of the information on the website is incomplete or old. This makes the district look bad. For example, the sports information is not updated correctly — KMS 7th & 8th grade girls’ basketball lists last year’s players, but this year’s coaches are named. The boys’ teams don’t even have the coaches right. There is a place for the schedule, but nothing is listed. Who is responsible for reporting and updating this information, especially when the coaches are not teachers in the district?

Coaches have been asked to provide the information collected. There are students in place at the high school and middle school to enter this information into the website. Unfortunately, the students usually do not receive the information from the coaches, so there is no data to put on the website.

Many other schools have much nicer sports information. Defiance has pictures and profiles of the coaches. Many sites have maps and driving directions to help locate individual schools within their districts. As a parent who uses the information that other districts have on their websites, I am not impressed with our lack of information.

Please view our interactive map of the school district. It shows each building in the district and allows you to get directions to that building.

How much effort is being made to get calendar information included for all of the schools? Who is responsible?

Each individual school is responsible for their own calendar.

First, the kids need to know how to type! Then how to use the internet and Apple Works or MSWord without the teacher having to teach it all! We have enough to do and the kids take FOREVER!

I’m currently investigating a couple of self-paced keyboard tutorials for use at the elementary level. Since the students have such varied keyboarding skills, a self-paced program should allow the advanced students to continue to learn while helping the novice keyboarding students.

We are constantly answering questions of those on the computers and cannot focus on those at their desks. How about some in-the-classroom training or a booklet of tips and how-to’s? Or one of you coming into the classroom and teaching these things!

I’m always available for training in your classroom. In fact, I’ve done several trainings with classrooms this year. I can also come in and assist when you are working on a project.

The students become disappointed if one grade level incorporates and teaches through technology then the next grade level doesn’t. The students seem to depend on that style of teaching and struggle when the next grade level does not provide those services. We need to get more teachers involved in teaching with technology. We need to continue to introduce small ideas that can be easily used by these teachers. We must continue to make baby steps.

Integration of technology into the curriculum is a very important component in the education of our students. We cannot view technology as something to learn, technology needs to be viewed as a tool to help our students learn. Microsoft Word should not be taught. Writing a letter in the correct form should be taught, and a word processor could be used as a tool. Spreadsheets should not be taught. Using a spreadsheet to graph temperature and humidity changes over time should be taught.

I’m more than willing to sit down with any teacher and go over their lesson plans to see where technology can be used to enhance the lessons.