Plano ISD Technology and Curriculum Integration

One of many opportunities that the Integrated Curriculum Project gave us was to affect the overall classroom environment with the infusion of instructional technology (See Technology Philosophy)

While the philosophy and design of the curriculum content and delivery was being discussed, similar concerns were being addressed in the technology arena as to how a wide variety of software packages needing different hardware specifications could be integrated over a networking system. The ongoing challenge is to keep the integration of curriculum content and design in sync with the integration of various technologies. The overriding factor of technology integration is to meet the identified needs of the curriculum. In other words, the instructional program needs to drive the technology implementation. At no time should the technology program restrict what the instructional program needs to accomplish. The figure below depicts fairly accurately the overall development of the integrated curriculum and shows the close relationship of curriculum and technology development.


The Plano ISD model for classroom technology to support the integrated curriculum includes: In addition to the above classroom technology, schools are encouraged to provide production centers in the libraries to enable students to work in small groups using equipment such as scanners, camcorders and digital cameras which is not found in individual classrooms.

CHRONOLOGY OF PLAN: This scope of classroom technology implementation in combination with the integrated curriculum development has occurred over a number of years as models were tested and funding became available. CURRICULUM INTEGRATION: The technology infrastructure listed above exists for a single reason - to support the needs of the integrated curriculum. An integral part of the technology implementation was the development of interactive software programs that include sophisticated simulations and multimedia databases designed specifically to support the grade level curriculum. Plano ISD entered into a partnership with Edunetics Interactive, a Steck-Vaughn company, to assist in the design and production of these custom applications. Edunetics is part of the team that works daily in our Curriculum Design Center along with teachers and coordinators. Each of our 36 "organizing ideas" has this custom designed software component to accompany it. In addition to these custom designed software packages, our integrated curriculum is supported by a variety of vendors who produce commercial packages for education such as the Learning Company, Tom Snyder Productions, Microsoft Corporation, Roger Wagner Publishing and many more.

INSTRUCTIONAL CHANGE: The integration of technology into the curriculum requires changes of significant magnitude in educational philosophy, classroom management and curriculum goals. For the technology to be used optimally, teachers must be comfortable with a constructivist or project-based problem solving approach to learning. They must be willing to tolerate and support students' progressing independently and at widely varying paces. Often we are asking teachers to integrate dramatically new philosophies of education, classroom management techniques and new ideas about interdisciplinary and individualized education into their daily practice. Of course, these same types of strategies and techniques are already part of our integrated curriculum. A typical classroom configuration as well as specifications for the hardware we use is found on the following page.

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Last Update: January 26, 1997

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