Table of Contents 

This section of the 2004 Census of Technology Report analyzes data from 2207 buildings, compared to 2250 buildings in 2003. While all buildings in the state complete the School Building Census Form, the report only covers those buildings with regular student populations. Data from juvenile centers, special education cooperatives, and other buildings (such as a gifted center) where attendance is reported at another building are not included in the 2004 report. Aligned to the Missouri State Education Technology Strategic Plan (METSP) technology focus areas, the intent of the school building census is to examine access and distribution of technology resources, technical support, teacher and student technical skills, and the routine uses of technology by user and technology type or function. A copy of the survey, completed with aggregated data, is provided as Appendix B. A copy of the District census is provided as Appendix A, and a cross reference of the 2004 COT items and METSP goals and objectives is provided as Appendix C. 

The 2004 data indicate continued improvements in the kinds and numbers of technologies that can be accessed in Missouri’s school attendance centers as well as in the ways school administrators, teachers, and students are using technology resources. While most of the gains are rather modest, they are impressive in light of the tight budget year as explained earlier in this report. Too, some of the differences (or the magnitude of differences) noted in data from 2003 to 2004 might be attributable to the change in reporting only buildings with regular student attendance. 

Technology Planning
As with the district COT, the building census examines the presence of a long-rage technology plan and partners that help the school building support technology. A school building long-range technology plan, like a district plan, should provide a road map to help the school implement strategies that promote the district’s mission, advance district and building improvement plans, and improve the teaching and learning occurring in the building.  

Item 1 – Building technology plans
Buildings are asked if they have their own technology plans and, if so, whether they are stand-alone plans and/or are embedded in district plans. Assuming that building plans should be integrated in a district plan, the item was reworded in 2003 to the “stand alone” plan. Table 13 indicates the percentage of school buildings that have technology plans, the percentage of building plans that can serve as stand-alone plans, and those included in district plans. Data show a continued trend in buildings having technology plans, starting with only 69 percent of buildings having plans in 1998 to 97 percent having plans in 2004. 

Table 13

Item 2 – Building technology partners
School buildings, like districts, are asked to identify any business or higher education institution with which they partner to support building technology.  About three in ten buildings in 2004 have a technology partner. Table 14 indicates the type and frequency of building partners reported for the last three years. An increase in the use of partners was noted in 2003, with another (though smaller) increase noted in 2004. Interesting in 2004 is the shift from working predominantly with colleges and universities to businesses – particularly technology-related businesses. These changes might be results of the decreases in state funding available to schools during the past two years.

 Table 14

Technology Professional Development

The use of technology in the school setting requires professional development aimed at helping educators integrate the appropriate education technologies into curriculum content, instructional teaching strategies, and day-to-day business. Teachers, administrators, and school services staff need regular, ongoing, and quality professional development that helps them gain the confidence and skills needed in using the school’s technologies – that promote district and school improvement plans and align with Show-Me Standards, board-approved curriculum, and board-approved educational technology standards.  

Item 3 – Building technology professional development 
Building contacts were asked to detail technology professional development offered during the 2003-2004 school year. In total, schools reported offering 83,874 hours of professional development for administrators, 123,650 hours for teachers, and 74,889 for support services staff. Tables 15 and 16 indicate the number of hours of training, by trainee and training type. Baseline data from 1999 are compared to data collected in 2002 through 2004. Table 17 details professional development offerings to support services staff for 2003 and 2004, the only years these data were included. 

The number of technology-related professional development offerings (in numbers of hours) appears to have peaked in 2002 and 2003, as indicated in Tables 15 and 16. While there was a slight decrease in the hours offered in 2004, the rank orderings of topics remain the same. Software application training was the only topic to be offered more in 2004 than in 2003, averaging over 18 hours for teachers, nearly 18 hours for support services staff, and almost 16 hours for administrators. Other training topics offered most often during 2004 include curriculum integration for both administrators and teachers and teaching applications for teachers. Training for support services staff almost exclusively addressed using software applications. 

Table 15

 Table 17

Item 4 – Technology skills of building staffs
Building contacts are asked to estimate the technology-related skill levels of principals, teachers, technical staff, and support services staff. Like for the district COT, the skill levels are: Beginner – basic technical skills including applications such as word-processing, some stand-alone software, and some Internet usage (email); Intermediate – regular use of applications, software, and Internet resources for increased productivity and the use of applications including word-processor for student writing, research on the Internet, computer-generated presentations; and, Advanced – complete integration and mastery of the technology, using it effortlessly as a tool to accomplish a variety of learning, instructional and/or management tools. 

Figure 18 illustrates the increase in the percentages of teachers, building administrators, and technology staff rated to have advanced technology skills from 1998 through 2004. (The support services staff category was not added until 2003.) In 2004, close to one-third (29 percent) of the school support services staff was estimated as having beginner technology skills, one-half (52 percent) having intermediate skills, and one-sixth (19 percent) having advanced skills. The proportion of teachers estimated as beginner technology users has steadily decreased from the 40 percent reported in 1999 to the 19 percent reported in 2004. Likewise, the rate of administrators (e.g., principals) estimated as beginners has decreased from 35 percent in 1999 to 8 percent in 2004. Accordingly, the percentages of staff rated to have advanced skills have improved dramatically. The rates of teachers and principals reported as advanced users have nearly doubled from 11 to 22 percent. The group with the highest rate of advanced skills includes technology support staff, at 80 percent.

Figure 18

The differences among the user groups are somewhat less marked when looking at combined intermediate and advanced skills, as indicated below in Figure 19. Almost all of the technology staffs (97 percent) have intermediate or better skills. Principals are close behind at 92 percent, followed by teachers at 81 percent, and support services staff at 71 percent. 

Figure 19

Item 5 – Number of days of professional development
Added in 2004, item five asked schools to report the number of days during the year that were scheduled for professional development activities where teachers in the building could learn and upgrade their technology and computer skills. In 2003-2004, buildings reported a total of 8,341 days, averaging about four days per building.

Item 6 – Number of eMINTS-trained teachers
Also added in 2004, item six tracks the numbers and locations of teachers who have participated in eMINTS professional development. Begun in 1999-2000, the enhancing Missouri’s Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies Program serves as the state’s instructional model of technology integration. eMINTS instructional staff have provided the two years of professional development for the majority of eMINTS teachers, with a small number of eMINTS teachers receiving their professional development from district staff that participated in the eMINTS program for education technology specialists. In 2004, contacts from 273 buildings report having 594 teachers with one or both years of eMINTS professional development.  

Hardware and Support I
Hardware and support items deal with technology access and support. Hardware and Support I deals with technical support, computer types and quantities by location, operating and reader software, and library automation. Hardware and Support II looks at equipment access and connectivity by location, various technologies located in the buildings, and typical  technical problems/repairs resolution. 

Item 7 – Building technical support
As a rule, building-level technical support is provided by district-level staff (true in 78 percent of the buildings) and/or by one or more certificated staff located in the building (true in 36 percent of buildings). Table 20 indicates the types of staff or others located in, or made available to, the buildings, as reported in 2003 and 2004. 

Table 20

Item 8 – Computers in the building
Annually, buildings report on the types and locations of computers in the buildings. Computer “type” clusters machines by platform and speed / capacity. Locations include: Computer Labs, specifically designated for computer work; Instructional Rooms, designated as classrooms, and Library/Media Centers, designated for library and media services. In 2004, the Instructional Rooms were broken out into grade spans of PreK-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and area career center. 

As indicated in Table 21, buildings reported a total of 273,636 computers in 2004 – a slight increase from the 270,368 building computers reported in 2003. Over 80 percent of the computers are PCs or PC-compatible, with 16.4 percent being Apple or Mac. Over 260,000 of the computers (95 percent) are considered capable of running the Internet at high speeds. To be considered Internet-capable, a computer must at a minimum run at Pentium or Pentium-equivalent speeds. Prior to 2002, the standard was 486 speeds or higher. Over 245,000 of the computers (90 percent) are connected to the Internet.

Approximately 94 percent of all computers are located in instructional rooms (computer labs, classrooms, and library media centers), with 97 percent of these machines considered Internet-capable. The 2004 data continue to document a shift in the location of computers. Since 1998, about one in three computers was located in a lab setting, ranging from a high of 36 percent in 1998 to a low of 31 percent in 2003 and 2004. The percentage of computers residing in classrooms has increased from 46 percent in 1998 to 56 percent in 2004. The shift is more noticeable when looking at the placement rates of computers within the instructional settings. In 2004, only 33 percent of “instructional” computers are located in labs as compared to 40 percent in 1998. The percent of “instructional” computers in classrooms has grown from 51 percent in 1998 to 97 percent in 2004.  

            Table 21