Part+IV+-+Professional+Development

1:1 Initiative Professional Development Plan
Before diving into the professional development plan for teachers, it was important to us to begin with the Framework of Essential Skills for K-12 School Tech Leaders from the Consortium for School Networking:
 * Tech Leader Development**

This document provides an outline of necessary skills needed and responsibilities of school technology leaders. The 'Instructional Focus & Professional Development' column describes planning and support the school tech leader should provide to promote professional development with new technology:
 * 4a: Plan for and coordinate ongoing, purposeful professional development.
 * 4b: Identify and promote how technology can support educational best practices through communication and collaboration with instructional leadership.
 * 4c: Empower staff to reach a proficiency level to meet the ongoing demands of their jobs.
 * 4d: Promote standards for innovative teaching and learning that develop student proficiency in 21st century skills.
 * 4e: Stay abreast of state and national standards, benchmarks and frameworks for technology literacy.
 * 4f: Promote the application of technology to address the diverse needs of students and maximize student learning.

Professional development focused on technology integration is so important now more than ever because technology has dramatically changed how knowledge is created, stored, accessed and communicated. It is now an essential component of education, more complex, greater in number and more integrated into learning. With new technology comes great change to responsibilities of tech leaders. A new vision and adequate skills are needed for all teachers and administrators at the scool in order for successful change to happen. (Consortium for School Networking, 2009). As the technology leader at our school, we will strive to acheive these goals in order to create a culture of technology at our school.

We defined the goals of our professional development plan using the School Technology and Readiness (STaR) Chart from the NH Department of Education School Technology Planning Guide:
 * Teacher & Administrator Technology Professional Development[[image:ipadblackboard.jpg align="right" caption="(Paczkowski, 2010)" link="@http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100224/apple-ipad-edu/"]] **

Given the current level of professional development at our school, our goals vary depending on the focus area of development from the STaR chart. In some areas we may aim to reach an advanced level of development whereas in other areas we may aim for an early level of development due to lack of skills and development.

Due to the broad spectrum of skills our teachers currently possess, there are multiple goals at this level. First is to get non-tech teachers to an early or development technology stage of using technology for professional use such as lesson planning, email, word processing, browsing the web, and slowly adding in more complex uses and defining curriculum integration strategies. For teachers with more advanced skills, the goal will be to directly tie technology to content areas and to effectively manage technology in the classroom. Training will further develop into modeling, mentoring and adopting new technologies for all teachers.
 * Level 1 Goal: Content of Training **

Across the board our goal is for 60% of teachers to meet ISTE and local teacher technology competencies and implement them into the school environment. We understand that for some teachers, reaching this goal will be relatively easy, while others will require extensive professional development to meet this goal.
 * Level 2 Goal: Capabilities of Educators **

With the technology available at hand, it is important that leadership and capabilities of school leaders are at an advanced level of development. Currently, this is not the case at our school. Our goal is to move from the early level of development at which our leaders are recognizing the benefits of technology in education and taking advantage of technology in personal use to the advanced level of development. Our leaders will need be re-educated on the NETS-A standards. Moving forward, we will strive for our leaders to use technology in daily work and approach proficiency in the NETS-A standards. The long-term goal will be to promote exemplary use of technology in instruction, use technology for research and communication, and provide constructive feedback to teachers on their tech use. Our school will be transformed from a school that employs technology on a minimal basis - where it fits in to the lesson - to a school that has developed a learning culture around technology use.
 * Level 3 Goal: Leadership and Capabilities of Building Principals and District Administrators **

Currently the level of professional development in technology is lacking, so it is important to start small here at an attempt to keep all teachers on board with the change. Throwing less experienced teachers in with more tech-savvy teachers has the potential to be quite intimidating. We would begin at the early stage with whole-group skill-based training as a means of assessing current levels of tech proficiency among teachers. Staff members may need to be broken out into smaller groups with similar ability levels to keep progress on track, as less-experienced teachers will likely need greater training and more frequent follow-up on progress. The goal is to get all teachers at the profiecient technology level where coaching and modeling of best practices occurs regularly. Once all teachers have attained this goal, the group as a whole will focus on reaching the advanced technology level of creating a culture of technology inquiry, sharing and knowledge building. At this level, greater support, mentoring, observation and modeling will take place as the primary means of skill development.
 * Level 4 Goal: Models of Professional Development **

With few teachers at the early adoption stage, it would be our primary goal to get all teachers at a level of adaptation in which technology is used to enrich curriculum and is used regularly with students. Once this goal is attained, as a whole we will move forward to taking advantage of technology, its unique capabilities and integrating technology in the learning process.
 * Level 5 Goal: Levels of Understanding **

Our final goal is to build awareness of assistive technologies, including hardware and software, so that special educators are integrating on a regular basis, and general educators have the skills and tools at hand to employ technology where and when appropriate. Where integrating technology provides a level of outside-of-the-box thinking, the goal is to empower all teachers to seamlessly integrate assistive technology to students in need.
 * Level 6 Goal: Universal Access - Integration of Universal Design and Assistive Technology **

Our methods of professional development are what we believe to be five principles of providing professional development to coincide with our major technology upgrade. We applied the the principals from CoSN's Framework of Essential Skills to help us develop our own professional development action plan that will allow teachers and leaders to acheive the goals described above. First and foremost, we will //provide ongoing, purposeful professional development// in a variety of ways. We will made a committment to consistently model the use and integration of technology through everyday use and demonstrations for teachers. Once the 1:1 program is implemented, we will conduct regular teacher evaluations of the progress they have made with the new technology, which will enable us to provide feedback, support and answer questions. We will develop a method of continuously monitoring technology use by teachers and students so that we may reflect on and improve upon our 1:1 program. We will also assist teachers in adapting their personal learning networks to include technology use, 1:1 lesson plan ideas, troubleshooting, learning new software, and more.
 * Methods of Professional Development **

Our next method is to //identify and promote how technology can support educational best practices//. We will do this through communication and collaboration with instructional leadership. Modeling use of technology will help, but we will also regularly hold optional training sessions for teachers to collaborate and share ideas. We will create a wiki like this one for teachers to network with each other and share lesson ideas that work and other information. We will encourage all teachers and administrators to take advantage of technology and apply it to everyday tasks in their professional and personal lives. Teachers will be reeducated on information use policies and research citations of digital sources. We will take these steps prior to the start of the school year to assist teachers with their curriculum preparation, and these methods will continue on throughout the year.

Another method of professional development is to //empower staff to reach a proficiency level to meet the ongoing demands of their jobs//. This is going to help staff move forward in integrating technology into their classes. We will empower teachers by setting up a mentoring and peer support program before the start of the school year in which more experienced teachers can help less experienced teachers build their knowledgebase of technology use in school. We feel that by creating a culture in which everyone is both a teacher and a learner, all will feel empowered to continue growing as a tech leader, no matter what content area they teach. We also feel that a huge factor in empowering staff is to provide them the same 1:1 opportunity as students. Every teacher will be issued an iPad in advance of the start of school for the teacher to provide adequate time to learn and feel comfortable with the new technology, including learning new ways in which it can enhance learning. Another key piece to empowering staff is to provide them with the right training opportunities for them to improve their tech skills and explore new ideas. We will use in-service days prior to the start of the school year for initial training, and our teacher networking wiki to provide additional training throughout the year. Our optional training sessions will also be an opportunity for teachers to receive additional face-to-face training on technology, software and integration.

The third method of PD is to //promote standards for innovative teaching and learning that develop student proficiency in 21st century skills// and to stay abreast of state and national standards, benchmarks and frameworks for technology literacy. For this initiative, we will need to reeducate our staff on state and national tech literacy standards including NETS-A, NETS-T and NH ICT standards and maintain communication with staff on new developments and updates to the standards and other literacy management tools. We will take time to regularly review the STaR Chart to analyze progress and make changes to our implementation plan if needed. We will also commit to attending yearly ed tech conferences to refresh knowledge and encourage other teachers to attend as well.

Lastly, we will //p////romote the application of technology to address the diverse needs of students and maximize student learning//. In order to do so, we will include in our staff training sessions examples of how technology can adapt to meet students' needs, such as using technology to enhance learning of special needs students, motivate and engage students, and help at-risk students achieve their goals.

The level of professional development needed to support this initiative is quite extensive. Because of the broad range of abilities among faculty and the aggressive goals of our initiative, an intensive training program is needed. First we will propose that our teachers attend the Apple Professional Development Program 2-day workshop prior to the start of the school year. This workshop will give teachers the opportunity to explore the iPad and its uses in education. Since they will attend this workshop and other tech conferences before school begins, as well as participate in several professional development programs within the school, they will have adequate time to prepare lesson plans to include the iPad, thus being fully prepared for Year One of our implementation plan.
 * Professional Development Budget**

Additionally, we must take into consideration the scope of work of the Tech Integrator on this project. It is only fair to budget a portion of the Tech Integrator's wages to this project because the position will be heavily involved in the ongoing training and development of staff throughout the school year. To do so, we would need to analyze the complete job description of our Tech Integrator/Educator position, come to a conclusion on percentage of time spent on the iPad project and negotiate an appropriate wage. Given that the majority of the professional development initiatives are based on in-school training and mentoring, the Tech Integrator would be responsibile for development of training sessions, coordination of mentoring program, and coordinating/administrating tech integration evaluations and providing other support as needed. As our plan moves from Year One through to Year Two and Year Three, we may decide that an additional tech support (either half time or full time) is warranted due to the ever-growing technology at our school.

Apple Professional Development Program - $4,500/year (for 16 attending teachers/administrators) New Hampshire Local Education Support Center Network (LESCN) - $3,125/year (for 25 attending teachers) Christa McAuliffe Tech Conference - $10,000/year (for 20 teachers attending 3 days plus room/board) Partial Tech Integrator wages for training & development - To be determined Yearly membership and conference fees to maintain tech literacy standards for Tech Integrator, Principal, additional key staff - $1000 allowance per person