STaR Chart - Teaching and Learning

The STaR Chart is an evaluation instrument used by the state of Texas education system to monitor and evaluate the level of progress schools are obtaining developing technology in their education environments. STaR is an acronym for School Technology And Readiness. The evaluation(chart) is broken into four categories: Teaching and Learning, Educator Preparation, Administration and Support, and Infrastructure.
I will will discuss Teaching and Learning in this blog as it pertains to the Jim Ned High School campus data as well as statewide data. The campus is classified as Developing Tech. Most odf the six areas surveyed were given 2's as answers. A 2 is a developing tech . As one of the teachers that took the STar chart assessment I think I can discuss these results with some expertise. I would say that the results are a fair representation of my personal results. I think I can speak for many of my fellow educators when I say that there is a frustration revolving around the use of technology. As we see much progress on our campus with infrastructure with better servers and school wide WAN systems, teachers feel as though they are ill prepared to use the technology with the amount of training they have received to this date. There is definitely a push by our administration to use technology in the classroom, and I and other teachers fully embrace this idea. The problem becomes to find professional development that will provide teachers with the hands on information they need to actually use the technology to assimilate their curriculum. It is my opinion that right now the technology infrastructures are beyond our abilities to use. One example is that we have school wide wireless Internet connections but we also have filters that do not allow teachers to access websites that would be beneficial. This is one of the problems that must be solved so educators do not become disenchanted with the process. People who teach classes at Service Centers have never used these technologies in the actual classrooms, so it is hard for teachers to trust such training. We must find a way for Advanced and Target Tech level teachers to collaborate with early and developing tech teachers such as myself.