Identifying Professional Development Needs
Too often professional development has been criticized for being irrelevant or incapable of meeting the needs of educators. Just what are those needs? How best can those professional development needs be measured and met? Through this module, you will learn strategies to help you identify and assess professional development needs within your school or district. It is through identifying these needs and responding to them that useful and effective professional development programs may be developed.
Professional Development Programs
Studies show that professional development programs aimed at impacting technology integration in schools need to be improved. To promote the use of technology as a classroom tool, professional development should be provided through interdisciplinary curriculum projects, utilizing teachers as trainers and then as mentors to provide ongoing support. These teacher-trainers should be skilled in the use and integration of technology.
This module covers the strategies needed to design such a professional development program to better meet the needs of the educators in your school or district.
Leadership, Mentoring, Coaching, Collaboration
One of the problems that exists from introducing technology in schools is that some teachers feel that they are being coerced into integrating technology instead of being invited. This module will help you gain the skills needed to provide leadership and guidance to teachers and to encourage the development of a community of learners within the school, the district, and beyond. There are two key areas that need to be targeted for implementing change. The first is management, which is the way that change takes place. The second is change in leadership, which relates to those who are in control of the needed change.
This lesson addresses these two key areas of change and explores the role that teachers can play in implementing change within the school system, which can lead to more effective technology integration practices.