Keeping track of their schools' technology resources in relation to the digital divide, staff development, and various technology goals is no small task for state or local education officials. Yet monitoring those resources is key to ensuring equity, gauging progress, and qualifying for some types of funding. Now, a new online program aims to make the task significantly more manageable by allowing education leaders to track, analyze, and evaluate technology changes as they occur in their schools.

OnTarget, developed by AWS Convergence Technologies Inc., a provider of weather monitoring technology, was introduced three years ago to help educators at the Maryland Department of Education track the progress and continuing deployment of technology at state and local levels.

Today, this same technology is being used in Mississippi, too, and is being offered as a product to all states, as educators search for ways to close technology gaps and position their schools for funding under newer, stricter federal guidelines set forth by the Bush administration.

Bob Marshall, chief executive officer of AWS and chairman of the State Technology Committee in Maryland, helped develop OnTarget after discovering there was no truly efficient way to track the use of technology in schools at any level.

"As committee chair, I can tell you that one of our primary tasks is to monitor how [Maryland] schools use technology. We didn't know what they were doing," Marshall said.

According to Marshall, it took 18 months for his committee to compile a paper-based report administrators could use to judge how technology was being used throughout the state's schools.

OnTarget provides the same information compiled in the state's paper-based report in a interactive database that can be updated to show changes in real time and customized to illustrate visually the progress each district has made toward individual and statewide technology goals.

Before the system, tracking technology from school to school and school system to school system was difficult, Marshall pointed out.

"One school could have a student-to-computer ratio of 5 to 1, and another one two blocks down the street could have a ratio of 200 to 1. It's a tremendous tool to see how schools stack up next to other schools in the state," Marshall said.

In Maryland, educators have found the program's ability to highlight the digital divide especially helpful. For instance, schools in Prince George's County were awarded $9 million in funding after educators there used OnTarget to help prove the county's student to computer ratio was well above the state's overall goal of 5 to 1.

"It really helps us focus in on improving technology. It shows a big gap from the state targets," said Judy Finch, chief of technology for Prince George's County.

OnTarget has also provided schools in Mississippi and Maryland with an opportunity to judge how well teachers understand and use the technology in the classroom. Each state's findings consist of a section for teacher evaluation.