Technology Applications Certifications

Technology Applications Certification Areas

Professional Development Requirements for Certification Renewal

The State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) began issuing a Standard Certificate on September 1, 1999. The Standard Certificate replaces the lifetime Provisional and Professional Certificates. The renewal cycle for a Standard Certificate is every five years at the end of the educator’s birth month. (For example, an educator born in March who is issued a certificate in December 1999 would be subject to renewal requirements in March 2005.)

SBEC published a questions and answers document to help educators understand the changes to the rules governing renewal when the Standard Certificate was implemented.

To be eligible for renewal, the classroom teacher must satisfy Continuing Professional Education (CPE) requirements. The renewal date of a Standard Certificate will be five years after the last day of the certificate holder’s birth month. If a classroom teacher holds multiple certificates, all can be renewed concurrently and all are subject to renewal during the certificate holder’s birth month five years after the earliest certificate was issued. Teachers who fail to satisfy all of the requirements to renew their Standard Certificate(s) by the renewal date move to inactive status and are ineligible for employment in a Texas public school district in a position for which that certificate is required until all appropriate requirements are satisfied.

Certificate Renewal Requirement Information is available on SBEC’s website.

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Approved Certification Programs
The State Board for Educator Certification has a great online feature to provide you with updates and information on certification. You will need to sign in and update your information. Then you can search for certification programs by area of the state or by certificate area. It will take a few seconds for the results list to appear.

Classroom Certification Requirements:

• Technology Applications at Grades PreK-5: A district may determine that a teacher with any elementary certificate is competent to teach Technology Applications at Grades PreK-5
• Technology Applications at Grades 6-8: A teacher with any elementary or secondary certificate is competent to teach Technology Applications courses at grades 6-8 or anyone with an EC-12 certification. Certification is not required.
• Computer Science I and II: A teacher must hold a Computer Information System (CIS) certificate or the new Computer Science certificate.
• Technology Applications Courses 9-12: (Desktop Publishing, Digital Graphics/Animation, Multimedia, Video Technology, Web Mastering, and Independent Study in Technology Applications) A teacher must hold a Secondary Technology Applications Teacher Certificate for grades 8-12, or a Grandfather certification for teaching a secondary technology applications course prior to the 2003-2004 school year, or holding a Certification by examination available in Fall 2004. Initial assignments to teach the six technology applications courses beginning with the 2003-2004 school year require the Technology Applications Certificate.

Notes:

1. The district is responsible for seeing that teachers have the appropriate technology applications knowledge and skills, as defined in the SBEC-approved Educator Standards for Technology Applications, to teach the course(s) to which they are assigned.
2. Individuals assigned to teach one or more of the six technology applications courses prior to the 2003-2004 school year based on meeting the above criteria shall remain eligible to teach the courses to which they have been previously assigned. The employing school district is responsible for ensuring that these technology applications teachers stay current through annual continuing education and professional development tied directly to the specific Technology
   Applications TEKS in 19 TAC Chapter 126 for the course(s) taught. The school district must maintain documentation of this continuing education and professional development in the personnel files of the teachers.

Master Technology Teacher Certificate and Grant Program
The 77th Texas legislature passed House Bill 1475 which mandates a Master Technology Teacher certification and grant program. This program is very similar to the Master Reading Teacher and Master Mathematics Teacher. Both the Texas Education Agency and State Board for Educator Certification are involved in the implementation of this legislation to ensure that there are teachers with special training to work with other teachers and with students in order to increase the use of technology in each classroom.

The law states that:
The commissioner shall make grants to school districts to pay stipends to selected certified master technology teachers. The commissioner shall give preference to teachers who teach at high-need campuses. Criteria for selecting high-need campuses will be identified and approved as part of the commissioner rules. The grant program will be implemented after the development of the examination for the master technology teacher certification. While there is currently no funding for the grants, appropriations are expected once the Master Technology Teacher Certificate and examination have been implemented by SBEC.

SBEC established a committee of Texas educators, educator preparation faculty other stakeholders, and business representatives, to develop standards for the new certificate. Master Technology Teacher Standards were adopted by the SBEC board in January 2002. These standards will serve as the basis for the new certificate examination. In February of 2002 another committee finalized the test frameworks for the new Master Technology Teacher (MTT) exam. The first administration of the new examination for the Master Technology Teacher certification took place in Summer 2003.

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