EDUC 638 Christopher Interview

Upon the completion of the interview process, the school that was chosen for this assignment was a school in my school district by the name of Williams Sullivan High School. This school is located in a rural town name Durant, MS which is located in the Holmes County School District. This school is located on 14494 Hwy 51 South, Durant, MS  39063.  Williams Sullivan enrolls students from 9-12 grades.

Although school is of course is out for the summer break and through extensive research, I was able to locate a teacher by the name of Ms. Erica Clayton. Ms. Clayton is an educator that teaches computer technology at Williams Sullivan High School. The interview process was very informative because Ms. Clayton was friendly and made the atmosphere of the interview very pleasant. When conducting an interview, the atmosphere must be pleasant thus creating the right questions to be asked and the right questions to be answered.  The questions that was asked was in the area of funding for computers, the effects of social networking, effective training on the integration of new technology and the current application of the computer technology class.

In the area of funding, due to the financial effects of the economy, education is not receiving the full funding that is really needed to advance or to promote the advancement of education. Holmes County is one of the low income counties that are located in the state of Mississippi. “Holmes County School district is trying their best to advance with the advancement of technology to better prepare their students for the real world” this was a direct quote from Ms. Clayton.  Ms. Clayton stated that “due to the advancement of technology that is constant on the rise, it has become difficult to try to keep the computers, software and applications up to date.” The funding for computers are limited but the school try it best to make sure the software are current to date such as Microsoft Word 2010. The use of Microsoft word prepares students for college such as assisting the student to become familiar with Microsoft word, PowerPoint and excel spreadsheet.

Another area that was up for discussion during the interview process was the effect of social networking. According to our book the technology director’s guide to leadership the power of great questions state that implement monitoring and management tools to determine whether your network bandwidth is sufficient for organizational needs. Teachers will not spend valuable class time waiting for long Internet downloads or slow network response time. You must know what your peak time loads are and what types of traffic is actually moving across those lines (Hall, 2008). Ms. Clayton says that for one solid week in her computer technology class, the students are educating on the pro and cons of social networking sites.  Ms. Clayton stated, “My students are prepared for the pro and cons of social networking sites. The pro of social networking such as Twitter and Facebook is maintaining a clean image with NO profanity. The reason for this is to educate my students on how colleges and possible employers may browse their social network page to sum up there profile. The cons of social networking sites, is profanity, nudity, and a bad self-poor image. If their profile is not clean or does not contain morals, this will interfere with their chances for colleges and possible employment opportunities. I educate my children to be mindful of how they carry themselves which will reflect how they are received in this world.”

Another area that was up for discussion during the interview process was the vitality of effective training for the integration of new technology in the classroom. Ms. Clayton discusses the importance of effective training on new technology that the teacher must receive before presenting it to her students. Ms. Clayton stated, “Effective training in any subject produces effective results in any given classroom.” She further stated that the integration of new technology is both vital for the teacher and for the students. If the teacher is not familiar or does not receive the proper training of new technology how can a teacher effusively teach the students the new technology that is present in the classroom? New roles for teachers and administrators have become evident as more and more school districts employ full-time technology coordinators. In districts with many schools geographically dispersed, it is common to have build-level-coordinators in additions to district-level coordinators (Picciano, 2011).  As Ms. Clayton stated, effective training is so vital in the learning process of the new technology in the classroom that will become beneficial to both the teacher and the students. Overall, the interview process was a great process. Thanks to Ms. Clayton and the Holmes County School District.

Reference

Hall.  D. (2008). The technology director’s guide to leadership: the power of great questions. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

Picciano, A. G. (2011). Educational leadership and planning for technology (5th ed.).  Hunter College, 

NY: Allyn & Bacon.