Jamye Swinford
My name is Jamye Swinford. I work for Crane Independent School District in Crane, Texas. I am the Technology Staff Development Director for the district. I have been with the district for 16 years. With the help of a TIF grant, we completed a new technology center a year ago this past summer. The technology center houses a 34-station multimedia, Internet connected computer lab. It also has a fully equipped television broadcast studio for video technology. There is a distance learning room, used primarily for teleconference meetings with different school districts throughout Region 18. The computer lab also has three monitors for distance learning classes when the district is ready for implementation. The T-Star satellite connection is also in the technology center.

I teach technology classes to teachers and staff at CISD. After teacher/staff registration, any openings are offered to community members at no charge. Sadly, most teachers and staff do not take advantage of the free classes, but community members sure do! The classes are offered after school hours, three times a week and consist of word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentation graphics. As time permits, I also offer special topics, such as Internet usage, building web pages and the like. I am still refining the program.

Besides the staff development, I also teach the Business Computer Information System classes to students at the high school. We have just launched the Crane ISD web site, and I am Webmaster (rookie!) for several of the pages, a lot of which are still under construction at the present time. I also tutor for the Upward Bound program for Odessa College, and I do the computer purchasing for the district. All classrooms have at least one Internet capable computer.

I am an active member of Texas Computer Education Association, serving on the Board of Directors representing Area 18, Region 18. Region 18 covers 37,553 square miles and includes 19 counties, 33 school districts, over 6,300 educators and approximately 81,000 students.

I have three children, Callye, married and a freshman at Old Dominion in Norfolk, Virginia, Bryce, a sophomore at Crane High School, and Ty, a seventh grader at Crane Middle School. My husband, Alan, also works for Crane ISD. We live on ten acres about three miles out of Crane. We have a lot of animals, including dogs, goats, chickens, ducks, geese and guineas. We have lived in Crane for almost 20 years.

Crane is located 30 miles south of the Odessa-Midland metropolitan area in west Texas. Crane is a community of some 3,500 people, most of whom earn a living in the oil industry. The community has a modern hospital, nursing home, parks, numerous churches, libraries and all the security of a small town with friendly, caring people, with the attractions of a metropolitan area only 30 minutes away.

I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but I am a native Texan! I graduated from Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico, with a BBA. I completed my teaching certificate at UT Permian Basin, in Odessa, Texas.