Purpose
    The McFarland Unified School District has prepared this 5-Year Instructional Technology Plan, for the years 2005-2010, to articulate a common vision for technology in McFarland schools and identify the strategies that will help schools use technology to promote student achievement of rigorous curriculum standards and the development of critical thinking skills that are essential for academic and workplace success. McFarland Unified School District recognizes that technology is an integral part of our educational curriculum: not a separate goal, but rather a tool used to enhance education within our district.
Organization
    The Executive Summary outlines the Plan’s Introduction, Planning Parameters, and Needs Assessment and includes the complete five-year goals. The full Plan provides more details and includes McFarland's implementation strategies and timeline as well as appendices with additional support materials and a glossary of terms. 
Background
       Technology will be implemented, utilized, and upgraded so that upon graduation students are technologically literate life-long learners. Our graduates will be capable of competing in a higher learning institute and the emerging business and technologically minded society of the 21^st century.
Planning Process
       A technology committee was commissioned to develop the 2005-2010 McFarland Unified School District’s technology Plan, see Appendix F. The first step in Planning of this Plan was assessing our existing technology. What do we have in place, and how well is it working. The next step was to define the District’s needs which enabled the committee to suggest the most efficient solutions to those needs by researching the existing technology options and deciding on ones that meet our needs at a minimum cost. The findings, resources, needs, and available as well as future budget were then written.