Analysis

**__Analysis__** As stated in the Executive Summary, Potterville is not an affluent neighborhood. According to city-data.com, the median yearly household income is under $30,000. There are roughly 2300 students and 250 employees in the entire Potterville school district which serves grades Pre-K-12. The teacher to student ratio is 16:1. Of all 13,500 residents in Potterville, 7.5% are college graduates. Enrollment in higher education is half the national average. The average teacher has 14 years of experience and 61% of those teachers have masters degrees or better.

Standard 1: Nature of Technology** The implementation of the course management system will allow students and staff to work more effeciently.
 * Ohio's Technology Standards

It will help students see the impact technology has on their lives, and students will aquire a technological understanding. They will develop attitudes and practices that support ethical decison making and lifelong learning.
 * Standard 2: Technology and Society Interaction**

Students will support their learning by using technology resources. They will collaborate, plan, and produce products with the assistance of technology which will enhance their learning, and they will investigate and experiment using technological resources.
 * Standard 3: Technology and Productivity Applications**

Students will publish and aquire information using an array of media formats. They will particpate in an online learning environment to communicate and collaborate with others.
 * Standard 4: Technology and Communication Applications**

Students will apply information-management skills to answer and expand their knowledge base. This will include the process of selecting, analyzing, and synthesizing the information to generate a finished product.
 * Standard 5: Technology and Information Literacy**

In order for the CMS implementation to be successful, a number of conditions should be met: Potterville has not had difficulty acquiring funding in the past. However, given recent economic conditions and the relocation of area businesses, a large levy would be a hard sell to the residents. As such any new infrastructure purchases and investments associated with the implementation are going to need to be handled with extreme care. Open source (free) solutions need to be considered. Work loads of existing IT support should be reviewed to see if they can handle the additional load of supporting a CMS. It may be prudent to consider hardware consolidation options such as virtualization to reduce overall costs.
 * "IT needs to be involved and supporting the project.
 * The entire budget should be allocated for the project.
 * Ample time is dedicated for installation and testing.
 * Timelines need to be realistic.
 * Needs for the CMS should be clear.
 * Use a phased approach
 * Train the trainers and users
 * Support the Users” (Belton and Caul).

Some opportunities that will be addressed with implementing an LMS include bridging the course delivery gap between high school and college. The current lack of peer to peer collaboration outside of the classroom will be resolved as students will now have a supported way to communicate asynchronously. Lastly, assuming parents can be granted accounts, communication between parents, students, and teachers will be vastly improved. Currently the only time there is communication between these groups is during PTA meetings and parent teacher conferences.

Some problems that will occur include cost, training, and the acceptance of parents of students. As mentioned above, economic conditions are not favorable, so costs will need to be minimized. Possible solutions to this include the use open-source/free based solutions such as Moodle or Sakai. Considering the fact that there is already an extensive server infrastructure for Potterville Schools, adding more hardware may be expensive in terms of man power. One way to minimize this cost may be to purchase a larger/more powerful server and convert existing machines into virtual appliances. This may present more money upfront, but reductions in the number of physical machines may mean reductions in the number of full time employees needed to keep the machines running. Another potential issue is the adoption of the technology by teachers. Lots of time should be dedicated to training and course development. Executing this upfront will lead to saved time and reduced frustration when the system goes live. Lastly, another problem/opportunity that needs to be considered is the usage of parents. To achieve the goal of greater communication between teachers, parents, and students, parents will need to be involved. Open houses, conferences, training materials, and community announcements will need to be offered at regular intervals to ensure that parents are not only made aware of this new tool, but are actively using it to improve their children’s educational experience.

There are numerous players involved in this strategic plan. Starting with the beginning of the plan, teachers, administrators, and IT will need to be involved from the beginning. Teachers will need to create a list of their needs for the LMS, administrators will need to manage the time of teachers, make sure things stay on track, and communicate with the community at large. IT will need to make sure hardware resources are available and request additional resources if needed. They will need to make sure that they are trained on how to properly support the LMS that is selected and on how to create content as teachers may look to them for answers on how to perform certain tasks.

As far as who is involved post installation, teachers will need to make sure that they are trained and understand how to use the LMS, parents will need to actively involved with their children’s education with this tool. IT will need to know how to perform maintenance on the LMS (patches, updates, etc). Administration will need to continue the dialogue with the community on how to use this tool (perhaps annual open houses for IT, Teachers, and Parents). Executive Summary Major Goals and Objectives Actions Budget Classroom and Computer Lab Management Conclusion