Step-by-Step Professional Development in Technology

Sarah Meltzer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317925064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Don't train your teachers in instructional technology without reading this resource-packed book from Sarah T. Meltzer. Meltzer presents easy-to-follow guidelines for bringing about effective professional development in technology from start to finish. She takes you step-by-step through the process of planning, implementing, and managing professional development opportunities. The book is also filled with handy, practical tools and resources, such as

• pre-planning worksheets
• needs assessment surveys
• long- and short-term technology plans
• technology inventory forms
• training schedule templates
• and more

Meltzer provides filled-out examples of those forms, so you can see how to complete them. She also offers blank versions for your own use. In addition, each chapter concludes with a checklist to help you keep track of the steps you take as you make professional development in technology a reality—and a success—in your school or district.

1	Introduction

This is an exciting and rewarding time to be a part of the educational movement. If you are a positive person who embraces change and challenges as I do, you will agree. If you don’t agree, you may have many unresolved concerns regarding education or be a skeptic at heart. Either way, do not stop reading—give me a chance to help make change palatable and worth the effort. This book is not written to convince the reader that professional development in technology is a must or to tell you exactly how to make it happen. Instead, it is written to provide you with research and experience-based approaches to developing and implementing professional development in technology as you address reform in your school. A step-by-step format has been designed to help those charged with leading a school district, individual school, or team of faculty to develop and implement an effective and sustainable professional development plan.

After reviewing and reflecting on the history of education, I believe there have been more positive changes in the past twenty years than in the previous one hundred. Schools are continuously changing and moving forward as they both respond to populations struggling for equality and recognize the importance of diversity for both students and teachers. With the rapid evolution of the American family and a more technology-based workplace, schools are being targeted and challenged to respond.

Transforming schools into exciting and motivating arenas for student learning does not happen overnight, and this transformation cannot be orchestrated by a single person or a small group of creative people in a school. Change is often received as a threat rather than as positive forward movement. In order to meet the modern expectations of the public as well as federal and state requirements, teachers need to improve and, in some cases, adapt their skills and knowledge. This can only be accomplished through effective and sustainable professional development. Teachers who implement changes based on research are more likely to reform their classroom instruction and provide students with the skills necessary to be successful in today’s ever-changing world. What was once good enough for grandma, or even mom and dad, is not good enough for our children.

As more and more schools consider reform, apply for grants, and struggle to meet expectations by providing professional development for their faculty and staff, they rely on the same principles they have used in previous initiatives, workshops, and trainings. If you have ever attended a faculty meeting when a principal announced that a technology workshop had been scheduled and everyone was required to attend, you probably saw a mixed response from the teachers. A few faces lit with the excitement of learning new techniques or software. A few faculty quickly looked over their calendars to make sure they had other commitments on that day. Many rolled their eyes and mumbled “here we go again.” This last response is not surprising since the majority of school-based technology workshops have been unsuccessful in terms of sustainable impact on classroom instruction and student learning. The terms professional development, workshop, and training are often considered synonymous with boring, same old thing, and waste of time.

My educational experience has taken me from classroom teacher to school district technology support person, project manager, and educational consultant. All of these roles have provided opportunities to work with faculty, staff, administrators, district supervisors, and superintendents as they organized and provided professional development in technology for a variety of needed skills. As project manager, my first step was usually meeting with the principal or designee assigned to coordinate the project. The coordinator was sometimes excited about the upcoming activities. More often, however, coordinators were disinterested or had feelings of both trepidation and concern about the project’s success. Those who have been charged with coordinating professional development tend to either follow the same plans they have used in the past or ask the people providing the trainings to do whatever they usually do. For example, as a project manager, I had a principal explain to me that she was not very comfortable with technology and did not understand how teaching her faculty to use computers or software in the classroom would have any influence on student learning. Since the school district required her to provide teacher training in technology, she wanted me to implement one day of training for all teachers, which would be scheduled on a teacher planning day. It is not surprising teachers are often resistant to scheduled trainings that they are required to attend. Often the trainings appear disconnected from their current classroom agendas. Teachers are also resistant because they feel they need the planning day to complete grading and other projects.

Being “asked” by a superintendent or principal to coordinate professional development can be overwhelming even for those with experience. While one individual is usually designated the “responsible” person, he or she should not have to do all the work or “assign” tasks to others. The following chapters are intended to help coordinators and directors look more closely at professional development and approach the process in a more focused and collaborative way.

Why Now?

One of the buzzword phrases of the past ten years is twenty-first-century skills. With the lightning advances in technology in recent years, expectations for graduates entering the job market have changed considerably. Consequently, teacher expectations have also risen. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2009), an organization supported by the U.S. government, has been one of the leaders in developing and promoting a vision for meeting the educational needs of this century. The organization published the “Frame-work for 21st Century Learning,” which identifies four areas of skills, knowledge, and expertise that students need to master to succeed in today’s world. In addition, it includes a support system that helps build a foundation for students to become more engaged in the learning process. A key element of this foundation is professional development.

In support of this trend, in 2010 the U.S. Department of Education released the National Education Technology Plan, titled “Transforming American Education Learning Powered by Technology,” which includes a model for technology-supported learning, resources and tools. Such buzzwords, guidelines, and suggestions are becoming more and more difficult for educators to ignore. Chapter 2 of this book is devoted to a review of specific guidelines, standards, and recommendations for professional development by governmental groups and professional organizations. While this book focuses on the step-by-step process of technology-based professional development, it is important to also understand the needs and underlying principles of these processes.

This approach to professional development is a world away from the textbook and curriculum training of the past. Most people do not have extensive knowledge of technology. Teachers attending a workshop or training on a new curriculum or behavior-management technique begin the day with a strong command of the vocabulary of teaching and dealing with children and considerable classroom experience. This is not the case, however, when beginning a workshop on learning how to use newly purchased software or how to integrate computers into the classroom. Many teachers do not have the knowledge base.

School and school district administrators have been providing workshops to train teachers in new curriculum strategies, policies, school procedures, and textbook materials for more than thirty years. When these same processes are used to train teachers in employing technology, the end result is often frustration, negative attitudes, and a sentiment of “this too shall pass.” After working with hundreds of schools and school districts attempting to introduce technology into their curriculums, it became clear to me that school administrators and staff flounder as they search for new and successful methods to train and support their teachers, as well as ways to convince faculty and staff that technology is a permanent part of the future. While the preferred implementation of a new basal reading textbook or new math problem-solving strategies may be effectively explained to faculty in a three-hour workshop, the same implementation for technology is not sustainable. Teachers generally come to a workshop with a well-developed foundation for using textbooks and basic teaching strategies. They are open and eager to build on their knowledge. However, when it comes to technology, teachers often lack comfort with the basics of using computers, software, or even digital cameras. In addition, as a group they demonstrate a wide variety of abilities and skill levels. Providing effective and sustainable professional development in technology to a group of teachers requires a very different approach.

While many professional organizations and government education committees have provided support for staff development focused on the use of technology in the classroom, they rarely address the process. It is nearly impossible to find a complete list of procedures to help administrators ensure their activities are worth their efforts. Most agree it is critical for teachers to receive some type of training. While some organizations suggest there are critical steps, it is difficult for administrators to connect all the pieces and develop a solid, effective technology plan. Too often, teacher training becomes a separate entity from the original plan or goal, assuming a goal has actually been predetermined.

Purpose of This Book

This book focuses specifically on the process of how to plan, implement, and manage the professional development of teachers in instructional technology. For the purposes of this book, instructional technology is primarily defined as the use of computers or related technology hardware and/or software used to support or enhance the normal instructional process. The term professional development is used interchangeably with the terms training, in-service, and staff development. The processes addressed in this book refer to a group of professional educators working together to learn a new hardware, software, curriculum, or strategy to support the efforts of using technology as part of the normal curriculum. This book is not intended to address the need for teaching technology or to help computer-based teachers improve their technical skills, nor does it address how teachers should instruct students in the use of technology. Rather, it is intended to support administrators, school district personnel, faculty, and staff members by providing clear guidelines and necessary steps to help ensure effective and sustainable professional development. The focus of the professional development may be simply introducing teachers to a newly purchased computer for research in the media center or it may be long-term, such as training and supporting teachers to integrate existing technology into their classroom instruction. In some instances, it may be necessary to convince teachers and staff of the importance of specific professional development. While Chapter 2 provides concrete research to support the need for improving technology skills and supporting teachers in the integration of technology skills in their classroom instruction, this book is not devoted to convincing the reader this topic is important. The importance of providing professional development is addressed to give those developing their own plans important background information they may need to provide to others. Each step in the process in Chapters 3 through 6 is aligned with the supporting need to learn these skills. In essence, this is a step-by-step manual for successful project management of professional development in technology. This process takes into account the big picture, or whole puzzle, as well as the smaller pieces that make up the puzzle to provide sustain-ability. The extent of the goal will determine the duration of the process.

After researching and analyzing recommended practices and commonly reported best practices by schools, I have compiled the key processes into a step-by-step format to help schools and school districts provide effective and sustainable professional development in technology. Effective professional development is “that which results in improvementsin teachers’ knowledge and instructional practice, as well as improved student learning outcomes” (Darling-Hammond, Jaquith, Mindich, Wei, 2010, p.2). For the purposes of this book, effective means that teachers or key participants are using what they learned one year later. The level of success will be related to whether the professional development is sustainable, or in other words, continues to be evident over a long period of time. In addition, depending on the goal of the professional development, effective may relate to meeting the long-term goal, or more importantly, increasing student achievement and supporting reform within the school or district.

This book breaks down the process of providing effective and sustainable professional development from planning through implementation and support. Technology, such as computers provided for teachers in classrooms, should be used as they are intended rather than as dust catchers or bookends. My visits to classrooms months after a teacher training often reveal a computer center littered with dust, papers, and “out of order” signs on computers. A key outcome for sustainable professional development should be a positive impact on student achievement. Research links these and supports the importance of “designing and implementing programs that make a difference in the lives of students” (Joyce, 2002, p.10). Technology sitting idle on tables and stored in closets is not helping instruction.

Although the need to develop and implement an effective and sustainable professional development project is evident to many people, others may need more convincing in the form of research-based data. As the need for school reform and instructional change become more pressing, hopefully, the need to vary and improve classroom instruction will follow. Administrators and faculty alike should embrace the integration of technology in order to meet the needs of children in the twenty-first century. If the information and support provided in Chapter 2 is insufficient, a wealth of information is available on the Internet to help support school administrators connect the steps of the process as they tackle school reform.

Chapters 3 and 4 include two sample technology plans developed for two very different schools. They have been included to give the reader ideas and to clarify the definition of direction. Some discussions of the plans are shared to help readers understand why specific steps were included. However, it is important to review these simply as samples to clarify the process and not to use them as all-inclusive plans. Each plan for professional development should address the unique needs of the students, faculty, and staff. Whether the need is only for a small group of faculty, one grade level, or one small group of targeted students, all the step-by-step processes should be considered. Use these sample plans and suggestions as guidelines and a foundation for discussion within yourplanning teams.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 end with a summary checklist. This is intended as a quick reference for readers to review and determine if they have missed any critical pieces. In addition, the worksheets, templates, samples, and guides are listed at the end of each chapter in which they are explained. All of these forms are provided at the end of the book in Appendix B. This format is intended to make them available for easy reference whether they are needed within the text or as a reference at the end. A limited number of common resources are provided at the end of the book as well. They are intended as only a starting point for your resources and not as an endorsement. Because Internet addresses and online resources change frequently, I have provided only a few major Web sites. I encourage readers to use these as a base and to build their own list of links and share current resources. I teach my students to do this by using Microsoft Excel to create a spreadsheet of resources that can be sorted by curriculum topic and type of resource. I wish I had taken my own advice and started this long ago.

2	Guidelines, Standards, and Recommendations

Professional development in technology should be considered a high priority for most schools across the nation. Not only is the fast pace of emerging technologies almost impossible to keep up with, but it is a daunting task simply to support others in becoming comfortable with what might be considered the bare necessities of educational technology. Fortunately, many school districts have been proactive by allowing textbook funds to be used for software purchases or other allocated dollars to be directed toward the purchase of additional computers, digital cameras, document cameras, computer projection equipment, and so on. However, it goes without...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Guidelines, Standards, and Recommendations
• 3 The Big Picture: Preparing for Success
• 4 Planning: Setting the Stage
• 5 Implementation: The Action
• 6 Follow-Up and Support: Now What?
• 7 Conclusion: Growing the Process
• Appendix A: References and Resources
• Appendix B: Worksheets/Templates/Guides