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3 ways to tailor edtech PD

Kick start the school year with customized professional development. Here's how.

2 min read

Edtech

3 ways to tailor edtech PD

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With a new school year comes the required — and sometimes dreaded — professional development (PD) for teachers. Tailoring PD to fit individual concerns will reduce complaints and help start the new year off on a positive note. Here are three ideas to get you started:

  1. Try a Chautauqua approach by offering an entire day of PD activities.  Provide multiple sessions, simultaneously, by asking enthusiastic teachers to share their expertise. Highlight new databases, media literacies, grade or subject specific sessions to show examples of tech integration. Include a technology help desk for individual consultations as well as a dedicated area for “playing” with technology.
  2. Gamify the day to make learning fun! Choose a theme, make it interactive, collect badges and give out prizes. Use Flipgrid, Padlet, Zeetings or other similar tools to have teachers post questions and reflections. This also helps with documenting and assessing the learning that took place.
  3. Follow-up with teachers during the year. Use Google Sheets to keep track of meetings and comments. Don’t forget to offer support, encouragement and continued learning opportunities all year long.

Ginann Franklin is the director of libraries & educational technology at Currey Ingram Academy (CIA). As part of the LibTech team, she teaches information-literacy skills, helps with planning and implementing CIA’s digital-citizenship curriculum and provides professional development for teachers. Franklin is a winner of the Center for Digital Education’s 2016 Top 30 Technologists, Transformers & Trailblazers award. She is passionate about empowering students to become critical thinkers and empathic problem solvers.

Tech Tips is a weekly column in SmartBrief on EdTech. Have a tech tip to share? Drop us a line at [email protected].

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