Hey, there! Where've you been? I've been waiting for you, hangin' out here in the digital divide, so I'm glad you found me! My purpose in the blog this week is to share a little more information about my "Call to Action", specifically to discuss my intended audience.  

     The bulk of my intended audience is the men and women who comprise the technology department, specifically those individuals in the Educational Technology department, within our school district. Technology changes in our district begin with this group and are driven by the department's desire to "provide a better education for all students.". Of the three individuals in the Ed Tech department, one is a technology specialist with a Masters degree in Educational Technology. The other two are Teacher Tech Trainers. One of the two trainers holds a Masters degree in Library Media Science and was the lead tech trainer for the secondary schools before making the move to the Ed Tech department. The other trainer is a former elementary classroom teacher with no advanced degree but she's been in the department for four years so she is familiar with the technology issues facing the teachers in our district. The head of the department (Director of I.T.) holds a Bachelors degree in Informational Technology. For those reasons, I can confidently say these individuals are well versed in Ed Tech concepts and lingo and will have a better-than-average understanding of the topic in my "Call to Action". I have chosen to include these individuals in my audience because they are the ones who make the decisions regarding technology in our district. I also plan to include our district's Director of New Staff Development.  Her support and cooperation will be paramount to the success of any new Ed Tech program designed for new teachers as they come on board and acclimate themselves to Lawton Public Schools. My goal is to "sell" the strategies and best practices included in my  "Call to Action" and garner the support of each of these aforementioned individuals so we can eventually work on developing a partnership of sorts with the local public university. As it stands right now, our local university offers a class in Media/Technology but (for the most part) we are not seeing new teachers come in confident in their tech abilities. A partnership with the university would by extremely beneficial as it would allow us to have some input and share our tech knowledge in the development of material that would help new teachers thrive with regards to using Ed Tech rather than just survive it.

     With regards to the prior knowledge I will need to provide in my presentation, I believe my intended audience, for the most part, will be pretty well versed in and familiar with the topic. My topic is providing ongoing professional development to in-service teachers as well as pre-service teachers. However, for the benefit of our Director of New Staff Development, I will explain the meaning of "digital divide" and provide some background knowledge to give her a frame of reference. I will assume she has only a basic understanding of digital equity issues and, as a result, will be quite specific about what it is and why there is a need for ongoing related professional development. My hope is that my explanations and research will be so thorough she won't have any questions but I will continue to think about/anticipate possible questions I could expect from her. 

      There will be the matter of reviewing and/or updating the district technology plan. I have not seen one and am not even sure if we have a current one. Nonetheless, we can address that issue once my proposal is accepted. We must obtain buy-in from teachers and administrators so thoughtful, engaging presentations will be key to their acceptance of a new plan/more professional development. It must NOT appear to be "more on their plate"; they must see the value and benefits of additional training and be willing to commit to being actively engaged during the professional development. Our school community has already identified improving student-centered use of technology as an objective in our Continuous Strategic Improvement Plan.  Helping them see the connection between a teacher's use of technology and a student's use will be incredibly important to my cause.