Introduction

The positive, proactive, community-wide vision created by the recent Strategic Planning process is designed to improve educational quality, the community's overall competitiveness and ultimately the quality of life and standard of living of each citizen. The Community Alliance for Lifelong Learning has created implementation segments charged with providing the means to achieve the objectives of the Strategic Plan. The Education Implementation Segment organized a Technology Action Team to address the following Key Result Area of the Strategic Plan:

6. Integrate technology throughout the school system and [to] interface with local agencies.

In response to this charge, the Technology Action Team makes the following recommendations for Strategic Objectives:

1. Access - Every citizen of the Bloomington-Monroe County Telecommunity should have reasonably convenient access to the resources necessary to make full use of technology.
2. Connectivity - The Bloomington-Monroe County community should be made up of neighborhoods of Local Area Networks and Wide Area Networks connecting schools and other learning institutions, libraries and museums, hospitals and clinics, local government and other centers of community activity, and the residences of teachers and learners to community-, state-, nation- and worldwide information systems and to each other.
3. Support - Technology should be used to assist existing agencies, institutions and businesses and begin to establish Bloomington-Monroe County as a telecommunity where high tech communications, productivity and education ideas can be tested and proven in an environment where unprecedented collaboration fosters lifelong learning. Technology should be used to enhance the roles and instrucffonal opportunities of teachers. Technology should be used to support the development of critical thinking and collaborative skills, as well as to expand educational opportunities, for learners.
4. School Technology Plans - The Monroe County Community School Corporation should update the current five-year technology plan, reflecting the need for the development of a community-wide information infrastructure and the supported and sustained integration of technology into the teaching and learning process.

Further, the Technology Action Team recommends a series of strategies designed to accomplish these objectives. In developing these recommendations, the Technology Action Team has examined resources and functions in Bloomington-Monroe County and presents a case-study for the potential for technology resources and functions in the Monroe County Community School Corporation.