Technology Counts - March 14, 2013 - 16

Designing Better

PD MODELS

Ed-tech training should focus on what students need to learn, not on specific digital devices
By_Leslie Harris
O’Hanlon

indergarten teacher
Maria Knee says her
pedagogy hasn’t changed
much since she began
teaching in 1972. She
wants her young students to work
for real purposes, have opportunities to talk with one another, and
explore concepts in hands-on ways.
What has changed are the tools
she uses. Starting six years ago,
Knee, who teaches at Deerfield
Community School in Deerfield,
N.H., created a class blog, which
serves as a digital journal of what’s
happening in her classroom. As part
of the blog, Knee infuses several
technological tools into her teaching.
Students use digital voice recorders to read stories that they
create and that are stored on the
blog. They also use digital cameras
to make video recordings of themselves demonstrating concepts
they have learned. In addition,
they edit video, deciding what information is most important and
what can be snipped away. And
they connect with other kindergarten classes in different states
and countries through their blog.
Much of what Knee has learned
about using technology in teaching comes from her own research.
She has formed connections with
teachers in other states and countries who blog with young students. She reads voraciously, and
listens to podcasts and webinars
about educational technology.
Traditional professional development, however—the kind in
which teachers attend a one-time
workshop or conference to learn a
new teaching method, for exam-

ADVICE

EDUCATION WEEK

ple—hasn’t provided much help
in bringing her classroom into the
21st century.
“I don’t really find that a lot of
professional development meets
my needs,” Knee says.
That reality needs to change,
say many education experts.
To help teachers integrate technology more effectively into their
teaching, professional development around educational technology should be a higher priority for
schools and districts, experts say,
and it needs to be ongoing and
collaborative.
Most importantly, they say, professional development on educational technology should focus, with
razor-sharp attention, on what students need to learn, rather than on
how to use a specific device.
“Too often, when we talk about
professional development around
technology, we are not starting with
the learning outcomes we want to
achieve,” says Leslie Conery, the interim chief education officer for the
International Society for Technology
in Education, or iste, a Washingtonbased nonprofit that supports the
use of information technology in
learning and teaching.
“Instead, it’s ‘I want to use an
iPad in my class. So I have to sit
and learn the device.’ While sometimes you do just have to sit and
learn how to use a device, that
shouldn’t be the starting place,” she
says. “The starting place should be
what you want your kids to learn,
such as learning how to be better
readers, to write more creatively, or
to hold good classroom discussions.”
Plus, technology shouldn’t be
learned in isolation, but in the
context in which it’s going to be
used, experts say.
“All successful learning begins

Make it ongoing. Professional
development around educational
technology should be ongoing, rather
than a one-shot deal at an afternoon
in-service. Ongoing approaches help
personalize the training by addressing
each educator’s strengths and
weaknesses more effectively, and they
give educators more opportunities to
take risks and learn from mistakes.

>> MARCH 14, 2013

with a problem, and it has to be
one you can relate to,” says Barry
Fishman, an associate professor of
educational studies and learning
technologies at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor. “So, rather
than saying I’m going to help you
use wiki, a much better place to
start is to say, ‘I understand you
want to foster collaboration or
knowledge-building. Wikis can lend
themselves to that approach.’ ”
Many districts and schools are
in fact moving away from solely
using the traditional format of
professional development to encourage technology integration
into teaching.
To turn his school into a technologically savvy place of learning,
Eric Sheninger, the principal of
the 660-student New Milford High
School in New Milford, N.J., worked
with a group of three teachers on
technology issues. They focused
their work on finding ways that
technology could bolster student
engagement in learning.
The group then researched and
experimented with different programs and tools those teachers
thought would excite students
and deepen their learning. They
shared what they learned with
colleagues at the school.
“We created a culture of calculated risk-taking, and teachers
were given a level of autonomy
so they were empowered to find a
better way, if they could, through

technology,” Sheninger says.
Also, Sheninger used socialmedia sites, such as Twitter and
Google+, to form his own personal
learning network, a group of other
educators interested in sharing
ideas about how to use educational
technology to improve teaching and
learning. He took what he learned
from his online personal network
and passed it on to his teachers.

A PERSONAL APPROACH
Three years later, that initial
group of teachers has grown. Now,
about half the staff regularly integrates technology into teaching.
For example, some teachers use
free Web programs, such as Poll
Everywhere, that allow students
to use their phones to text an answer to a teacher’s question. The
answers are displayed on a screen
for everyone to see, which allows
teachers to check quickly for student understanding.
Students and teachers also are
using programs such as Edmodo,
Google Docs, and Prezi to organize
courses, post videos, participate in
class discussions, collaboratively
write and publish papers, and create multimedia presentations.
“We place a premium on our
own expertise to basically form
our own model of professional development on educational technology,” Sheninger says.

Focus on learning. Ed-tech PD
should first focus on what educators want
students to learn, such as how to work
collaboratively on a piece of writing, and
then look at what specific technology tools
or applications can best help meet those
learning goals. Focusing on the technology
skill first undermines the primary goal of
using educational technology: to improve
student achievement.

Swap ideas online. Teachers
and administrators should look for
inspiration beyond their own schools
by forming their own professional
networks through social-media sites,
where they can swap ideas. Some
educators say such networks have
been more valuable than their formal
teacher or administrative coursework.

Virginia is also turning, more and
more, to teachers to educate their
colleagues about better uses of educational technology.
In 2005, the state legislature
created and funded new teaching
positions called “instructional technology resource teachers.” Those
teachers work with other teachers
to infuse more technology into their
classroom approaches in ways designed to benefit student learning.
“The traditional approach of the
three-hour training session on a
teacher workday or an after-school,
45-minute training session when
everyone is tired after a long day of
teaching wasn’t working,” says Jean
Weller, an instructional technology
specialist for the Virginia Department of Education. “We knew that
if we really wanted teachers to integrate technology, they need help
right then and there, as opposed to
whenever they go to a workshop.”
Each Virginia school district
hires its own instructional technology resource teacher or teachers.
Initially, those teachers were simply educators who were already
using technology in their teaching.
Now, many of the resource teachers have completed coursework to
be certified in instructional technology, Weller says.
The resource teachers help colleagues integrate technology into
their teaching, help with lesson
planning, assist students with technology infused projects, and act as

Encourage experimentation.
Teachers need time to experiment
with new technologies. They need
opportunities to research ideas, to
try out tools in their classrooms, and
to work collaboratively with their
colleagues about how best to use
technology to improve teaching and
learning. Schools should do their best
to carve out time for teachers to do that
kind of experimentation and sharing.

Technology Counts - March 14, 2013

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