Adam Williams

Technology Centers Evaluation

Georgia Southern University

FRIT 7738

Spring 2011
 The Educational Technology Center located at Dalton State College serves

the northwestern corner of the state of Georgia. Their service area spans from as far

north as Catoosa County along the Tennessee state line to Bartow County, which is

considered Metro Atlanta. In this expansive geographical area there are

approximately twenty school systems that are served. The technology center at

Dalton State consists of one computer lab, one classroom, one resource room, and

several offices. In the one computer lab there are twenty-eight Dell computers, one

Smart Board, one Promethean Board, two scanners, two printers, and one document

reader. One director, one technical support specialist, two instructional technology

specialists, one grant coordinator and one regional support specialist staff the

technology center.

The Educational Technology center at Dalton State College does a

tremendous job of working with the schools that reach out to them for help. I was

able to view video of a lesson where a high school class was video conferencing with

an elementary school class while they dissected a worm. Both the high school and

the elementary school were conducting a unit on worms and for the culminating

project the high school students dissected the worm while the elementary students

watched and were able to ask questions via the pollycom video conferencing system

provided by the Educational Technology Center at Dalton State College. The staff at

the Dalton State College Educational Technology Center provides other services

such as grant writing, infrastructure reviews, scientific calculator training, movie

editing training, podcast creation training along with helping schools with various

other needs. The Educational Technology center excels at working with the College
of Education at Dalton State College. One staff member told me that the graduates of

Dalton State’s College of Education are highly sought after because of their

technological skills. The exemplary work of the Dalton State Educational Center is

very evident with in the College of Education at Dalton State College and in the

schools they serve.

Though the Educational Technology Center at Dalton State excels in many

different areas there are several areas in which they can improve. Of the twenty

school systems that the Educational Technology Center serves, only two thirds of

the systems actually use the services of the Educational Technology Center. In order

to make this closer to one hundred percent, the technology center should make its

services known to the systems that don’t use its services. This would help build a

stronger base and it would increase funding so that they could staff more people.

Staffing is also a weakness. The Educational Technology at Dalton State College

covers one of the biggest geographical areas of all the technology centers. More staff

would mean they could provide more services to more school systems. Another

area where the Dalton State Educational Technology Center could improve is in the

area of graduate programs. The Educational Technology center does a tremendous

job of providing staff development to the schools they serve both in the schools and

on line. I would challenge the Educational Technology center at Dalton State to

provide a graduate program in the arena of Instructional Technology either online

or on campus. This would allow the Technology Center not only to expand on its

wonderful reputation but also to place more highly trained teachers in the school
systems. This would also allow them to become more connected with in the school

systems by lessening the burden on their staff to be at so many places at once.

Overall the Educational Technology Center at Dalton State College would receive a

grade of exemplary. They do a great job with the resources they have. They do not

let obstacles such as budget constraints keep them from developing teachers and

improving the learning experience for the students they serve.