Project Overview
The Technology Immersion Project (TIP) is a ground breaking education technology project being conducted by the Texas Education Agency in conjunction with several public and private sector partners. TIP is centered on a new idea called “technology immersion”. Technology immersion involves the provision of a combination or "package" of educational hardware, software, electronic curriculum, electronic assessment, professional development and technical support resources to campuses in 23 different school districts around Texas. Immersion is occurring over multiple configurations of campuses: middle schools, secondary schools, a vertical team of campuses, and even a whole district of campuses. The primary goal of TIP is to increase the academic progress of students by immersing campuses in technologies that are directly linked to the enterprise of teaching and learning.
Components of Technology Immersion
Technology immersion involves providing every teacher and every student at an implementing campus with six key resources. These resources have been identified as critical to successfully intertwining technology and teaching and learning. The resources are provided to implementing campuses as “packages” of products and services offered by leading hardware, software, content and service providers bundled together and delivered as a unit. Implementing schools choose from one of several immersion packages. Each package contains the following core components:
- A wireless mobile computing device for every student and teacher
- Productivity software
- Online content in the core curriculum areas
- Online formative assessment tools
- Ongoing professional development
- On demand technical support
Project Implementation Structure
School districts participate in TIP under one of four campus configurations: as a whole district (all campuses), as a vertical team of campuses (one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school within a feeder pattern), as a single secondary campus (a campus serving any combination of grades 6-12), or as a middle school campus serving only grades 6-8. The Texas Education Agency is providing Title 2, Part D (NCLB) federal funding to participating schools to offset the cost of implementing a technology immersion package on their campus(es). Districts implementing an immersion package on a Grade 6-8 middle school campus use a package preapproved by the Texas Education Agency. Districts implementing an immersion package on any of the other three campus configurations use one of the preapproved packages or create their own that includes all six critical components.
Project Desired Outcome
TIP and the immersion package is designed to create a “technology immersed” campus—one that uses technology as a bridge to more engaged, relevant, meaningful, and personalized student learning. The end goal for campuses using an immersion package is a teaching and learning environment where…
- Technology is integrated into teaching and learning via ongoing professional development
- Technology provides greater levels of student interest, inquiry, collaboration and content production
- Technology provides anytime, anywhere learning through a variety of delivery systems
Project Evaluation
TIP has a companion evaluation project called the Evaluation of the Texas Technology Immersion Project (eTxTIP). This evaluation project is studying 22 grade 6-8 middle school campuses implementing technology immersion packages against 22 control campuses where no immersion package has been implemented. The evaluation will be ongoing for at least three years. eTxTIP is sponsored by the US Department of Education. The purpose of eTxTIP is to conduct a scientifically based evaluation to test the effectiveness of technology immersion in increasing middle school (grade 6-8) student achievement in the core academic subject areas of English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. eTxTIP is a multi-year research project designed to determine the effect of technology immersion on both intermediate and long-term student outcomes such as technology proficiency, performance on standardized achievement tests, student attendance and dropout rates, student personal goals and student aspirations.
