Technology Program Administrator

Chelsea George

FRIT 7739 Practicum in Instructional Technology

Georgia Southern University

Fall 2023
Executive Summary

CJ Hicks is an elementary school within the Rockdale County Public Schools system. It

is the largest elementary school in the district with about 998 students from PreK through 5th

grade. Primary aged students are provided with iPads and upper grades students are provided

with Chromebooks to enhance instruction. Rockdale implemented their 1:1 device policy in

2013, so each student receives their own device. CJ Hicks is serviced by two digital learning

specialists who help teachers to implement technology into instruction and challenge students to

extend their learning through the use of technology. There is one media specialist and one media

clerk to assist teachers and students with informational literacy and research skills.

Organizational Chart

Please find the active link for the organization chart here.
Methods

I used a few methods to gather information about the district. My primary resources were

online and included the school’s website (Appendix A) and the district website’s technology page

(Appendix B). Additionally, I used a self-created Microsoft Form for my site supervisors to fill

out (Appendix C). I conducted a brief Teams interview with the Director of Information and

Digital Learning where I took anecdotal notes (Appendix D). I also gathered data from the

interview I conducted with my primary site director (Appendix E) and observations from my

blog posts (Appendix F).

Center Context and Goals

C.J. Hicks Elementary School is one of twenty-five schools in Rockdale County which

opened in 1970. In January 2010, the school moved into a new 110,000 square foot facility. C.J.

Hicks serves students in Pre-Kindergarten through fifth grade, as well as 3-, 4- and 5-year-old

students with special needs. Each classroom, two computer labs, art room, music room and

media center are equipped with 21st century classroom equipment. Being the largest elementary

school in the district, C.J. Hicks serves approximately 1,000 students each year. Each grade level

team has about 6 certified teachers with the exception of PreK which has 2 teachers as it is a

state funded program.

The mission of the school is provided in the school motto which says, “Helping

Individual Children Know Success = HICKS, reflects a commitment to all students. The

philosophy is that all students can experience success. This success is dependent upon a

comprehensive educational program that includes students, parents, faculty, and community
support.” The district’s overall mission for each school is, “To provide direction, support and

leadership for constructive use of technology in the educational process at school, home and

throughout the community; to provide professional development for school personnel; and to

secure technological capabilities to accomplish these tasks.”

C.J. Hicks’ technology goals include growing students to be able to use technology to

create representations of their learning, to collaborate with their peers, and communicate their

learning. The county’s technology goals include create students that are ethically responsible

digital citizens, helping students to become digitally fluent, and prepare students for a

technological world that does not exist yet. The director of digital learning shared with me that

the district’s primary goal is to prepare students for a technological future that does not exist yet.

This would include promoting digital citizenship, digital literacy, and ensuring that students use

technology as a tool to connect with others it an academically rigorous manner. The stakeholders

within the center are described below.

Personnel Descriptions

At the school level there are 3 primary technology positions to support both teacher and

students. The first one, in which I have the most familiarity, is the instructional technology

expert, or digital learning specialist (DLS for short). The DLS operates in a support role by

helping teachers to enhance the use of technology in various aspects of the learning process. This

job typically involves coaching, evaluations, and even working directly with students from time

to time. Responsibilities also include downloading software and programs onto devices,

troubleshooting online issues, and staying up to date on the most impactful programs for both
teachers and students. The DLS’s schedule is flexible and builds itself as it dependent upon the

unique needs of the teachers at the time. To ensure that there is uniformity amongst all schools,

the DLS’s from each school attends biweekly meetings at the district office. DLS’s work closely

with intel and media center specialists and clerks to ensure that all aspects of technology

integration are operating seamlessly.

Within the schools the intel personnel is mostly responsible for keeping the school’s

network connect running. At the elementary level there is only one intel while the middle schools

have two and the high schools have three. In this position, intels are also responsible for all

hardware issues with devices. In essence, the intel focuses on the physical technology issues

while the DLS focuses on the online issues.

Furthermore, the school’s media specialist is responsible for helping students with

informational literacy skills and building a more literate student body. The media specialist sees a

class from each grade level each day, which ensures that she is able to see each student with the

month. The media specialist helps with research projects for older grades and book extension arts

and craft projects younger. Lastly, the media specialist works closely with the media clerk to help

students check resources in and out of the library, read books aloud, and keep everything well

organized.

Center Activities

To help students achieve these goals there are many activities and programs put in place

from both the school and district level. At the school level, the digital learning specialist

conducts Title I technology meetings to update the stakeholders on the state of technology usage
within the school along with other pertinent information. Typically, parents and community

members are invited to join these meetings. They are held in person, but at the height of the

Covid pandemic, these meetings were presented online. Also, a great resource for parents is the

Parent Academy workshop that is available at least twice a year. In these workshops parents are

given the tools and resources necessary to empower themselves and their students. For example,

parents may learn how to navigate Classlink to assist students with homework or use web 2.0

tools to enhance a resume for their own personal use. The media specialist helps 5th grade

students train for the district’s reading bowl once a year to promote a love of literacy and develop

higher order thinking skills. This is held in person at the county’s central office.

At the district level, there are a few incentives and programs that encourage technology

mastery at every level of instruction. One of the most notable is the recognition of teachers that

use technology in an outstanding way. Each school recognizes a technology teacher of the year.

One teacher will then represent the district as being a teacher that goes above and beyond in

challenging themselves and their students with technology in the classroom. This teacher plays a

vital role in encouraging students to break barriers and take their learning outside of the

classroom. To continue, each year the district has a technology fair in which students from

elementary and up are able to participate. Students compete in various domains including

programming, design, video, etc. The technology teacher of the year is active amongst a panel of

judges to help elect outstanding student work. There is also a technology showcase that is not

competitive. It gives students an opportunity to be recognized and share their work with others.

Teachers are supported throughout the year with professional learning days where they are able

to sign up for workshops to refine their practice. It is during this time that digital learning

specialists are able to lead teachers in specified skills that they are able to “make & take” to
utilize in the classroom. One of the most impactful activities is the workshops that are held

during professional learning days. On these days technology experts in the district plan and teach

workshops based on the technology needs in the district at the time. This is a great way to ensure

that they are actively meeting teacher needs to help create a system of support.

Evaluation

The school’s mission and goals imply that there should be a steady progression of growth

toward technological leaders. Based on my findings, I do think that the center does a fair job of

making progress towards the goals. For example, I do believe the DLS’s are empowering

students by giving them the tools needed to creatively express thinking and learning by using

technology. For example, the first day that I worked with my supervisor, she led a 4th grade class

in a data dig in Microsoft Excel where they looked at their performance on a summative

assessment, made goals, and talked about actionable steps to achieve their goals. My supervisor

has also helped the teachers support the students by observing lessons to look for areas of

technology implementation. I appreciate that stakeholders, like parents, district leaders, and

others are encouraged to be active in their students’ academic performance through activities like

the Title 1 meetings and parent academies.

I do think that the DLS’s impact toward reaching the students’ goals would be more

impactful if there were one DLS assigned to one school instead of two personnel sharing two

schools. I believe it would be more beneficial for one technology expert to focus wholeheartedly

on supporting one school. Furthermore, I believe the DLS would have a more significant impact

on student goals if the school’s technology team had regular meetings. I learned from my
interview with my primary site supervisor, Donna Price, that while the school does have a

technology team in place, they do not meet regularly to assess the current state of the school.

The district’s mission and goals are also being met. The goal is to prepare students for a

future that does not yet exist. I believe that the district is making great gains by hosting the

technology fair where students are able to showcase their work and learn from others. The

district also does a great job supporting teachers to help make this goal a reality by hosting

various technology workshops during professional learning days. These are held approximately

once each quarter and are born directly from the feedback that is given by teachers. While

technology integration is encouraged, I did find that there is not an expectation set for teachers to

include technology regularly. Because the district is responsible for creating the county’s lesson

plan templates, I would recommend that within the template there is a section that is specifically

delegated to technology integration. I believe this would help to ensure that there is some

progress being made toward achieving student growth.

In regard to division of responsibilities at the school level, I do not see much overlap

amongst DLS’s, intel, and media specialist. IIQ tickets are typically assigned to individuals

based on the teacher’s need. For instance, if a charger is not working, there is not confusion that

the intel personnel will be assigned to that ticket. I think that each role works well and support

the other whenever there is a lack. Overall, I found that the personnel at C. J. Hicks do a great

job of actively working towards technology mastery. I look forward to seeing more growth and

improvement as improvements are made.

Appendix B - Rockdale County Public Schools Technology Page

Chelsea George: Does your school have a technology committee?

Donna Price: We do. We have a technology media committee. As far as our role, we are

to, let me tell you what we what our plan is we plan to look at how we can utilize

technology, how we can implement digital citizenship procedures and protocols with

Miss Burdett. We no longer use accelerated reader, but the we're using Beanstalk as our

reading. It's not invention reading mode of motivation, and so we look at ways that we

can use technology to do that. We don't really have purchases, but if we had a media, I

mean, if we had purchases we could look at, you know things to purchase for the school

back when we first became a one to one district, the media committee, media and

Technology Committee was instrumental in identifying procedures for CJ Hicks, how we

would follow that one to one, how we would distribute devices and so on and so forth.

Also, the Technology Committee works on the yearbook, so we just whenever there's a

need. You know, we pulled together.

Chelsea George: And is the technology committee only like admin and school personnel

or can parents also be involved?

Donna Price: We have not had parents on our technology committee, but that that's a

good idea. But we've just had staff.

Chelsea George: You are the first person I've interviewed where we actually have a

technology committee. The first and only.

need to. But it's not one of those committees where we meet every month, but we do have

one.

Appendix F – Excerpt from Blog Post from Week 3:

“Our day began with a very interesting session with a 4th grade class. The students have recently

received their data back from a beginning of the year summative assessment. To help the

students document and chart their progress throughout the years to create goals, Ms. Price led the

students into a data reflection. This data reflection included having the students navigate into

Excel online through Canvas (Rockdale's primary learning management system). This gave me

insight as to how I can support instruction with technology by having students reflect on their

performance with spreadsheet software.”