More effective professional development

Through observation and a system-wide survey of staff, we concluded four things:

1) that technology was being used by teachers more for teaching, rather than having students involved in using technology.

2) When students were involved, they used it more for PowerPoint, Word, and researching on the Internet, than collaborating, creating, and connecting using emerging technologies.

3) The main barrier teachers gave for not learning about and using emerging technologies with their students was lack of time, followed by not enough ideas, also stressing that if they were not required to use it, they wouldn’t.

4) Teachers preferred learning about emerging technologies during already scheduled staff and collaborative meetings, followed by during the summer, rather than optional after-school workshops, which is when it is typically done.

Possibility: Because of our findings, we are proposing to administration to provide ongoing opportunities during our monthly collaborative meetings and staff meetings for teachers to lead sessions on integrating technology. We are proposing that the sessions be divided by grade level or department, led by teachers, shown within the context of the curriculum, and presented in small chunks. We propose that follow-up sessions are provided with sufficient time to “play” with the tools and develop them to use in the classroom. A shared google doc will show possible workshop topics, teachers who can lead them, and areas of application. A system wiki has been started as a resource for teachers and place for sharing ideas.

Assessment: We will form a group of teachers who will go through ongoing tech PD the way we are proposing. We will survey them before they start and throughout the year to see if their use of technology and excitement about it has improved. We will present these findings to administration as a reason to continue this type of PD and do it more widespread each year.

– Conducted survey, informal interviews, observations.

– Discussed the results of our findings as a team.

– Did more informal interviews to confirm our views.

– Asked administration for opportunities to “try out” our “new” way of doing tech staff development.

– Met with Director of curriculum to ask if having ongoing tech PD was a possibility.

– Kept administration in the loop by meeting with them regarding our work and ideas.

– Kept teachers in the loop by presenting a ppt about new technologies and sharing the results of the survey.

– Encouraged opportunities for teachers to teach others to share their area of expertise and develop technology leaders throughout the system.

– Created videos to show admin/teachers to get our point across: How we are listening to our teachers to see the barriers and solutions; and listening to teachers and students to see the possibilities of using emerging technologies.

– Invited our assistant superintendent and director of curriculum to the PLP culmination event, so they could hear the possibilities from both tech leaders and other schools to help them buy into the idea.

– Next year, hopefully do this new tech PD more widespread and throughout the year.

– Next year, focus on one particular group of teachers to intentionally practice the new PD, following their change throughout the year with surveys and interviews to gather data to present to administration on its effectiveness.

– Next year, start another team of teachers in PLP to help spread the word on the shift in education and learning potential of using emerging technologies.

– The following year, implement this new tech PD throughout the whole system.