Professional Development Planning

Every summer right before the new school year starts, our campus instructional technologist, staff, and administration work together to discuss our previous year's STaR chart and complete the upcoming year STaR chart. Based on the teacher's surveys, we can determine what technology is available, what trainings teachers may have already had towards technology, and what technology and training still may be required for the campus to move forward with the integration of technology. We also have the opportunity to discuss any obstacles we may have come across in using the technology and gain insight from each other on how to overcome those obstacles.

After the interviews, assessing the AEIS data for my campus and looking at areas of weakness, analyzing the campus' STaR chart, and the tech survey, it has been determined that more support and better professional development is needed for the campus. Professional development is available each year for many areas, including technology, and is appropriate for technology training, but changes need to be made. After my interview with an administrator, Dr. Joe Rodriguez, I was very surprised to hear how he felt that although professional development may be good in the sense that teachers are trained how to use technology, teachers are not shown how to integrate it in the classroom curriculum. I felt that was a well made point and all professional development should be done in depth, teaching educators how to use the technology towards their specific curriculum. Professional development can be done through analyzing all the necessary data from AEIS, STaR chart, and teacher technology surveys, to see where technology is needed; therefore professional development can be broken up into specific areas of need. It is hard having training for all staff in a large group setting when some staff may not need that specific training for technology use, but instead may need training in another specific area.

Some professional development that can be used to better my campus with technology use would be using a new form of professional development where teachers can actually have trainings within their classroom setting, using only resources that are available to teachers on a regular daily basis. It is very frustrating when you go to training and the presenter has everything imaginable for the training, but you go back to your classroom and don't have any of those resources available. In this situation where professional development is made available to teachers in a realistic classroom setting, teachers can learn firsthand how to integrate the technology to the best of their abilities with the available resources. Also I do not think that any of the teachers on my campus are truly aware of the tech TEKS that we are supposed to be following daily/yearly. I honestly was not until taking this class. There needs to be a professional development training that guides teachers on how to address these TEKS using specific strategies and shows teachers how to properly implement them. Another professional development that would be useful to our campus would be Atomic Learning. I was made aware of this program through other teachers that use this on-line tutorial program in other districts. It is a neat concept because there are so many tutorials for technology use that teachers would have access to 24/7. An administrator can purchase the license use for their campus and give access to all their staff. I will make this aware for my administrator and hope to have access to it as soon as possible.

When I started my teaching career, I was given a mentor that helped me on a daily basis and it was the best experience I could have ever had. I learned how to do my job right and I made a great friend. We both learned from each other. This may not be part of professional development, but our district does believe in every new teacher having a mentor on their campus. It is the principal's job to assign a mentor for the new hires. There needs to be a strong mentor support system on campus where new technology savvy educators are paired with veteran teachers whose strengths are not in technology. In this situation, the new teachers can offer support to veteran teachers in technology, while veteran teachers can offer support in curriculum and instruction. If mentors and mentees are paired up in this situation, both can benefit by collaborating on how to integrate technology into the curriculum and instruction. In the process they can share their ideas with other teachers, therefore the entire campus moves forward. One last idea to help my campus in the area of technology would be to have our campus instructional technologist attend an annual instructional technology conference or other training and bring back ideas on how to train the staff with the newest uses of technology. Our CIT needs to always be up-to-date with the latest technology changes in order for our campus to meet state standards with technology and to make sure our students are receiving the proper education in order to assure their success for the future. Based on project tomorrow surveys, students have access to many mobile devices and use technology for many things such as online testing, online classes, collaboration, and communication. We as campuses have to stop looking at certain types of technology as roadblocks and start integrating them into our curriculum in order to maintain our students’ enthusiasm for learning and keep them intrigued.

Ultimately, the success of a campus depends on the leaders. Administrators have to gain support from central office and be willing to make any changes necessary to help their campus achieve success. They must constantly analyze data, find areas of weakness, require proper trainings for staff, make necessary resources available, and promote the integration of technology in the classroom.