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Teachers are very busy people who juggle many priorities.
Without a good plan, including all the critical steps, dates
by which they are to occur, and persistent monitoring,
technology use, like other important long-term objectives,
may get pushed aside. For this reason the AECT Project has
developed, at the request of teachers and teacher educators,
three planning tools:
Each of these tools is described below.
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The Technology
Implementation Action Plan Builder
Our Technology Implementation Action Plan Builder guides
you through the process of developing an interactive "Action
Plan" that will help you implement the technology strategies
you have targeted. Using the Action Plan Builder, you
will:
- select a goal
- select a technology strategy
- review the prerequisites for that strategy, adding
steps to represent the things you'll need to learn to use
that strategy
- add other steps, identifying who will review each
step and assigning an expected completion date.
This process is illustrated below. The fist step is to
select a goal from theAction Plan Builder's pull-down menu.
(The goal or goals you targeted using the Goal / Strategy
Selection Guide are the only ones that appear in this
menu.)
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Once you have selected a goal, the strategies you
targeted appear beneath the goal, as illustrated below
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When you select a strategy, the categories of
prerequisite skills appear in another pull-down menu, and
the prerequisiets within the first category appear as links
below the prerequisites pull-down menu, as illustrated
below.
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You can use the pull down menu of prerequisite categories
to look for any prerequisites you feel you will need to
learn to implement the strategy effectively. In this
illustration, the user didn't feel the need to learn any of
the "Internet Knowledge (Basic)" prerequisites, and has used
the pull-down menu to shift to the "Scanning Images"
prerequisites.
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When you see a prerequisite that you feel you need to
learn to successfully implement the technology strategy,
click on the link that represents that prerequisite, and it
will appear in the "step description" field below the list
of prerequisites, preceded by "Learn to...". in the
illustration below, the user has clicked on the "Use a
scanner to create a digital version of a photograph or line
drawing" prerequisite, so it has been added to the step
description field. To complete the creation of the step, the
user selects a reviewer (Self) for the step from the
pull-down menu, and types in a date by which that step is
top be completed.
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After filling out the fields for the step description,
the reviewer, and the estimated completion date, click the
"Add this Step" button and the step will appear as a green
bar, as shown in the illustration below.
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In addition to creating steps by clicking on
prerequisites, you can also just type a step in the "Step
Description" field, as in the illustration below. This is
importnat, because there will be many important steps along
the way that have to do with planning and preparation. Type
in the step description, indicate who will review the step,
and then add a date and click the "Add this Step" button.
Repeat this process until you have a plan that includes all
the important steps.
You will notice that the steps are sorted by the
estimated completion date, and that you can edit or delete
steps by using the links at the right of each step.
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When you have completed the action plan, use the "Action
Planning Complete" button to submit your action plan. If you
are part of a program that involves certified AECT Project
reviewers, your action plan will be forwarded to your
reviewer for comments and approval.
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Once your plan has been approved, you may begin the
process of tracking the progress you make using the "Action
Plan Progress Tracker," described below.
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The
Action Plan Progress Tracker
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Editing an Action Plan
As you work toward the completion of an action plan, it
is inevitable that you will want to make changes, adding new
steps or changing estimated completion dates, for example.
If you chose to edit an action plan, the interface is just
like the one you use to build an action plan (illustrated
below) so not much explanation is needed. One difference is
that when you come to a plan to edit it, the "skills list"
showing the prerequisites within a category will be closed,
to free up space on the screen. If you want to see the list
again, use the "Open Skills List" button.
- To change a date, step description, or reviewer
within an existing step, use the "Edit" link to the right
of the step.
- To delete a step entirely, use the delete link for
that step.
- To add a new step, type the description, indicate the
reviewer, add a date, and then use the "Add This Step"
button.
Because you may have more than one action plan in
progress at a time, the "Select Another Action Plan" button
let's you switch to edit other action plans.
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Reporting Your
Progress
As you complete the steps in your action plan, return to
the AECT Project's Login Menu and "Update your Action Plan"
to reflect your progress. As you can see in the illustration
below, for each step, you can indicate a "status," and the
amount of time you have spent on that step. The status field
will be blank until you have made any progress, at which
time you can change it to "In Progress" (when you have begun
a step, but not completed it), "Ready for Review" (if your
work on the step is ready to be reviewed by a peer or
certified AECT Reviewer), or "Complete" (if the step was
identified for self-assessment).
More About Dates: The dates you enter for each
step will be used by our monitoring system to help keep you
on track. Our computer will look for dates that have passed
for steps that are not marked as "Complete" or "Ready for
Review" and will send out a friendly reminder via email
about such steps, asking you to either update the action
plan to reflect that the step has been completed, or modify
the plan to set new dates. (A slip in one date, often means
that other dates will need to change as well.)
More About Completion Time / Professional Development
Credit: We have included the column titled "Professional
Development Credit" for two reasons: to learn how long these
steps tend to take teachers (so we can share average times
with other teachers so that they can plan accordingly), and
so that our system can track and report the time teachers
spend learning to use technologies for the purpose of
recertification. (Many states require that a certain amount
of professional development time be spent every few years to
maintain certification, and activities like these apply in
many locations.) Please report the time each step takes in
minutes, so that the calculations acn be done
accurately.
After you make any changes in the Progress Monitor, use
the "Submit changes" button to record the changes.
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The
Action Plan Review Tool
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If you are working on your action plan as part of a
teacher preparation program or school district inservice
program, or if you are working independently for AECT
certification, an AECT Project Certified Reviewer will be
working with you to approve your action plan and to monitor
certain steps along the way. The screen illustrated below is
used by the AECT Certified Reviewer to examine and comment
on your plan during the approval process, and periodically
to see how you are coming along.
Notice that the AECT Certified Reviewer has the ability
to request, through the check boxes in the "Email Reminder"
column, an email notice informing the reviewer of your
progress, on a step-by-step basis. If the reviewer checks
the box for a step, an email note will be sent to the
reviewer when you complete a checked step, or when you miss
a deadline for the step.
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In combination, these tools offer a way to help teachers
think about what it will take to successfully implement
technology, to identify the needed prerequisites, to monitor
their progress, and, ultimately, to help implement the
technology strategy effectively.
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Log
In (to get to the Planning Tools)
Back to the Tools
Menu
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