Oregon K-12 ARRA Implementation

Why it matters:

High speed, broadband creates access to assessments, essential data, and information needed by Administrators, Parents, Teachers and students.

Teachers and students need access in class and at home to engage in 21st century teaching and learning, including online learning communities, digital media, essential applications and tools.

What we need: 

Short term (2-3 years):

External Internet connection to the Internet Service Provider of at least 10 Mbps per 1,000 students & staff

Internal Wide Area Network (district to each school & school to school) of at least 100 Mbps per 1,000 students & staff

Long term(5-7 years):

External Internet connection to the Internet Service Provider of at least 100 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff

Internal wide area network connections from the district to each school and between schools of at least 1 Gbps per 1,000 students/staff

Why it matters:

Teachers and students need access to reliable hardware, software, and network functions to engage in 21stcentury teaching and learning.

What we need: 

Infrastructure:

District and building wireless blankets and access points to create equal, high quality access for students and staff

Staffing support to manage demands of modernizing buildings, classrooms, and keeping equipment updated in order to  enable technology-enriched teaching and learning

Hardware:

Staff need: reliable desktop computers, based on most current baseline standards, secured on viable refresh cycles

Teachers need: as a baseline, reliable laptop based on most current standards; interactive white board; document camera; projector; audience response units

Students need: access to computers/handheld devices via mobile carts to allow fewer resources to go farther within a building.  The current average ratio in Oregon of 1:35 (one computer to 35 students), must be improved to 1:3 in the next 3-5 years

Software:

Districts need access to high quality software that support and promote the following:  credit recovery, differentiated learning, and 21st Century Skills (creativity & innovation, communication & collaboration, Research & Information Fluency, Critical Thinking, Digital Citizenship, Technology Operations & Concepts).

Why it matters:

Administrators and staff/teachers must be provided with sustainable training on how technology-enriched, 21st Century education is integrated into and changes our current teaching and learning systems.  This ties improving student achievement with preparing students for 21st Century work and life.

What we need: 

Training Centers (ESD’S):

Geographically dispersed ESD’s (3-5), to provide districts administrators and staff/teachers  access to ongoing, high quality professional development, covering everything from financing, strategic planning, curriculum integration, tying technology integration to improved student achievement and school improvement,  tools and applications, and evaluation of technology-rich education.

Onsite/Face to Face:

Administrators and staff/teachers must be provided classroom and building level training opportunities described above that occur where and while their work is being done.  TOSA’s or trained instructional technologists must work side by side to mentor, support, and help build confidence and competence of entire staff.  Teachers are the best mentors for other teachers.

Online, 24/7 Training Content:

Oregon Virtual School District provides online tools and storage to house and host online,  professional development offerings (digital content, full courses, refresher modules).  Teachers and instructional technologists need to be organized and compensated for the development of high quality, online training that ties tools and content to new diploma requirements, essential skills, and Oregon’s Ed Tech Standards (based on ISTE National Standards for teachers and students).

Why it matters:

Oregon has a statewide, data warehouse system, emerging in response to the demand for reliable access to high quality data to inform program decisions, instruction, and student achievement.  The state and regional warehouses will ultimately create a data transport system across the P20 continuum.  It will also alleviate the district level burden of state collections and reporting through the functions of the regional warehouses.

What we need:  

Data Validation Trainers:

Districts have extremely varied capacities to effectively review, validate, and clean their data.  The quality of their data directly correlates to the potential for sound conclusions and decisions to be made.  Experienced, mobile support needs to be made available to any districts who need face to face, onsite assistance with the challenging process of getting their data quality (and the related changes in processes that naturally follow) to superior levels.

Subsidies for districts:

Districts across the state are in desperate need of financial subsidy to be able to participate in a regional data warehouses.  Many committed and then withdrew due to the economic crisis upon us.  A third to a half of the districts in Oregon will choose not to participate unless some subsidy can help them afford to do so.  Success of the enterprise-wide system in dependent upon full participation of our 197 districts.