As electronic tools affect our everyday lives, technology's effective use in education is essential. Schools need new teachers with new technology skills and current teachers capable of learning how to integrate technology effectively.

The State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) has approved educator certification standards in Technology Applications for all beginning educators based on TEKS for grades 6-8. TEA recommends that current educators strive to meet the same technology standards as beginning educators.

In this effort, Port Neches-Groves ISD has implemented an Educator Technology Assessment Program beginning with the 2003-2004 school year for all full-time instructional employees in the district.* This program is the result of the district's evaluation of the effectiveness of the TIF PS10 Assessment Tool implemented at our two middle schools during the 2002-03 school year. The district is extremely proud of the educators at both Groves Middle School and Port Neches Middle School. All teachers at the middle schools successfully completed the comprehensive assessment and demonstrated competence in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Internet, Outlook, and Windows Operating System.**

The 2003-2004 Educator Technology Assessment Program Phase I will evaluate Word, PowerPoint, Internet/E-mail, and Windows Operating System/Network.

The assessment is voluntary and will need to be completed by the educator without assistance from others. The educator will be required to include a statement verifying that help was not received from anyone else including other teachers, staff members, students, or family members.

Upon successful completion of Phase I, the educator will have his/her choice of one of the following items (or its equivalent) for his/her exclusive use while employed by PNGISD: Sony Cybershot DCS-P31 Digital Camera, HP Scanjet Flatbed Scanner 4570 cxi, or Palm m130 Organizer with Color Display.

A list of competencies are listed below with links to information for each skill.

*Teachers, aides, counselors, librarians, administrators
**Any middle school teacher wishing to participate in this endeavor may do so and are also eligible to receive one of these items upon successful completion of the 2003-2004 Phase I assessment.

Procedure:

1) Review competencies
2) If needed, take classes in summer.
3) When school starts, verify that you can log on to the network with your username. If unable to do so or if you do not know your username/password, call Brenda Duhon at 962-4268 x. 19.
4) Once you can log on to the network, e-mail bduhon@pngisd.org with the Subject Line: I'm ready for the assessment.
5) You will be notified by e-mail when successfully completed.
6) Select the item you wish to order for your classroom (Camera, Scanner, or Palm)

• Clip Art (Inserting Graphics, Resizing, Moving, Wrapping Style) and Word Art
• Formatting: Font and Font Size; Bold, Italics, Underline; Left, Right, and Center justification
• Borders and Shading (Including adding a border around a text paragraph.)
• Bullets and Numbering
• Headers and/or Footers with page numbers
• Setting tabs
• Creating/Inserting a table
• Setting Margins (Top, Bottom, Left, and Right)
• Symbols - © ™ ®
• Spell check

• Select a design/template
• Insert (create) a slide
• Rearrange slides
• Format a background
• Insert ClipArt or WordArt
• Insert sound from Gallery and/or Download sound from Internet
• Copyright laws--images, sounds, graphics
• Format/edit text
• Set transitions
• Capture a picture from the Internet and insert into PowerPoint

• Internet
• Locate a URL
• Navigate to web sites on the Internet
• Evaluate validity of web sites
• Ethical use of Website Info (Use MLA Citation to document web sites)
• Copy and paste text from the Internet into a Word document
• Use a Search Engine of your choice
• Use Internet to verify legitimate virus warnings and hoaxes
• E-mail
• Reply/Reply to All/Forward
• Check Region 5 e-mail on the Internet
• Ethical/Non-Ethical uses of e-mail and the network
• Permanently delete e-mail
• Attachments and viruses
• Attach files to an e-mail

• Log on to the network
• Save files to a floppy and to the network
• Identify the file path name for files
• Windows Search using the Wildcard Character (*)
• Copy files from your hard drive to a floppy using copy rather than File/Save As
• Troubleshooting: Computer won't turn on, Printer won't print, No Internet or E-mail, Cannot log on