5.

1 Needs Assessment - conduct needs assessments to determine school-wide,

faculty, grade-level, and subject area strengths and weaknesses to inform the content
and delivery of technology-based professional learning programs.
Reflection
The individual teacher technology assessment was completed in ITEC 7460. The goal
of this assignment was to conduct a needs assessment on a colleague I was going to
be coaching in order to determine the how to best meet his needs. This journal
describes the experience.
I had the opportunity to coach one of my colleagues last school year. Prior to beginning
the experience, I had to conduct a needs assessment. The first thing I did was have
him take a LoTi survey to determine how he was integrating technology in his classes.
His LoTi score was a 1.73 out of 5. On the 25-question survey, he only indicated two
areas, which were somewhat true of him now. The first was that he said he did was
present information to students using multimedia presentations or electronic slideshows
to reinforce the content standards that he was teaching to prepare students for tests.
The second thing he stated was that he believed his current instructional program is
effective without the use of technology, therefore he had no current plans to change.
This second answer worried me so I then gave him an adopter survey. His answers to
the adopter survey led me to believe he was not confident in his ability to use
technology effectively in his classroom. I then interviewed him to follow up on the
surveys he took. From the interviews, I came to find out that he was overwhelmed with
what he was doing, but he was open to learning new things. From these three types of
assessments, I determined that he had very few technology skills so we began our
coaching sessions with some very simple tasks. Without these three different needs
assessments, I would have not been able to determine his areas of weakness and
make informed decisions about the areas of technology-based professional learning he
needed in our coaching sessions.
From completing this artifact, I learned the importance of conducting a needs
assessment before beginning a professional learning program. The three different
needs assessments I conducted gave me a clear picture of the needs of my colleague
and allowed me to develop a professional learning plan to meet his needs. If I were to
do this over again, I would have continued working with him throughout the school year.
Because of the amount of classes I was teaching and the graduate classes I was taking,
I did not have a lot of time to continue spending with him. I plan on taking advantage of
the relationship we built last year to work collaboratively together with one another to
integrate technology into our curriculum.
The impact of this artifact definitely had a role in the development of my colleague. Had
I not conducted this needs assessment, I would have not had any idea what areas he
needed help in. Because of the assessment, I was able to observe him teach a lesson

and see him seamlessly integrate technology into that lesson. That allowed me to
assess the impact that this needs assessment had on his development as a teacher.