Huge thanks to Jason for the notes!

During one of our sessions, we determined “best practice” in technology-focused professional development, using this CFG Protocol (thanks Thomas for sharing the protocol!), based on each participant’s experience in all of their schools. Here are the highlights from our collaborative notes:

• 1:1 coaching has been much more powerful than workshops. Not sure how to sustain that.
• YIS Visiting Scholars Program: visiting professor who is doing a research project. They have 2 a year. Each professor stays for about 3 weeks. They offer 2-3 workshops per week.
• MYP/PYP – using that as a way to get coaches into the classroom for planning and team teaching. The tech becomes embedded.
• Agreed that PD needs to be tied into the teacher appraisal process. They need to be setting goals and held accountable for those goals.
• Good teachers sharing good practice with other teachers is received better than tech teachers sharing the same info.
• Host a tech conference. Suddenly you have 80 sessions offered over 2 days. Staff stepped up, showed leadership. Took a while for the unconference approach to take off but in the end it worked very, very well. They directed their own learning.
• Accountability is key, be it PLC, inquiry groups, or some other name. However, done wrong that kills the enthusiasm.
• Have students lead short PD sessions for teachers.
• Differentiated leadership: once a month 90 minute release time for teacher from each team. They bring their learning back
• One off type of PD has its place but the actual change is minimal. We need a much more organic process.
• The Fishbowl is fantastic. They feel comfortable attending and you can follow up in the classroom. The half hour block was key. It only took part of their prep, not all of it.
• After school sessions don’t work well and some teachers feel guilty.
• Curriculum driving the need. Drive it from the curriculum. For example, don’t focus on blogging, focus on reflection.
• Modelling is important.
• Weekly updates on what is happening. Kept it generic rather than stating the teacher because it got the staff talking.
• Group posterous posts for ipad pilot teachers.
• Half a PD day -teachers teaching teachers. Recruit teachers to share a specific project. Better received and builds experts.
• PLC model offers a constructive structure for people to grow and learn. Organized in content areas  - Singapore American School
• What do we want kids to know?
• How do we know when they know it?
• What will we do when students have difficulty learning?
• Timing can be  - Monday Test – Wed results back – Thurs/Friday extensions + learning
• Instructional Rounds – American School Bombay
• Thursday mornings 10min observations (non-judgmental) + followed by analysis for themes resulting in asking a question.
• Getting involved with other educational organizations like the IBO, Accreditation Visits, Evaluations. – Sinarmas World School
  • Great for influx of new ideas.
  • Great for staff CV and experience.
  • Time committment varies.
• Share PD experiences and called it “teacher inspiring teachers”.
• More examples of PD models shared by Dana (thanks Dana!)

We also had a breakout session on this topic, here are the notes (sorry, I can’t remember who took these, was it Will?):

• How do we move IT beyond just learning to use a tool? If we only teach how to use the tool then are we actually changing practice?
• Instructional Rounds – teachers walk around where they observe what is going on. Then questions are formed and professional dialogue is held. Every Thursday first block. Observers become part of the lesson. Based on the same base as “Peer Coaching”. From experience it is very empowering to all parties and encourages deeper professional dialogue. Lasts for about an hour. Tool to develp walk through forms.
• Begin with the end of mind. Plan out the vision of where you want to be and then base all decisions around this.
• Develop PD sessions based on a similar model as the COETAIL course. Teachers pay a small fee and get credit for it. These could be one day courses. They would focus on actual practice and then other aspects (IT, literacy, counselling, etc) are embedded into the training.
• Building time into the day to allow for PD
• There is a need for accountability. Whose role is it to check what is being done?
• “Looking for Learning” – based on 7 questions which you go into rooms and talk to students and teachers about actual practice.
• Teaching and Learning office – this is the place where the curriculum leaders
• Tom Kelly (Ideo) – how can you empower students? Could teachers have student mentors?
• Most attended PD sessions are the ones run by the students.
• We are there to support the teachers not assess them. You need to evaluate the practice and not the person.
• Tech Pilots – a group of teachers get extra PD time and regular meetings with tech coaches based on whatever there needs are. They are the test group for new initiatives and they are then responsible for feeding back to their team.
• Speed Geeking – short and bit size PD sessions run by teachers. Lots of ideas/skills are shared at one time – people choose what station do they stop at.
• Organic Growth – bring people in slowly and include choice in this process along the way.
• Rubric for the base skills which all teachers need to know. You need to work you way up to mastery. In ipad program it is going to be the 10 apps that everyone needs to know.

More group discussion notes:

• Differentiated was well received but difficult to sustain
• PD date nights
• Afterschool didn’t work. They are too busy and they feel guilty when they don’t come.
• School-wide goal process (e.g UBD, differentiation). Next year the goal is tech for learning so the PD days will have that focus.
• Staff have to have 3 personal teaching/learning goals and one must be tech focused. However, they are private so tech staff aren’t able to plan and support
• Team level experts are often less threatening and quicker
• Tech mentor retreat – spread out across subject, age
• Is key to get regular teachers involved
• Ask the students! Even in elementary there is often a child in the room who knows how to do that or fix that.
• Service hours available to students to come into the labs to help younger students during recess and other times.
• Online learning inspired some greatly. PD funds were made available. Not just webinars but actual courses.
• Middle school students visit homerooms each week to disseminate the message or skill of the week.
• Tech Tip Tuesday: preplanned what they would need and after a while what was needed was obvious. Wired Wednesday. Providing breakfast brought in steps.
• Inefficient: large group workshops. Don’t do them. Wastes the time of 2/3 of the people.
• What is most effective for brand new staff
• large group doesn’t work
• they can’t take much in
• we started pre-setting up everything for them so we didn’t need to meet. Better use of everyone’s time.
• 40 min. sessions all day long including after school on Thursday on different topics
• each week new topic
• 6-20 people per day
• teachers say in exit interviews that this works well
• want to integrate with veracross so that teacher can have print out of what they’ve done
• every month they have open desk…teachers pick topic…sign up for times
• embedded teacher
• busy, but would rather be busy in the classroom
• Offer many opportunities for PD sessions AND for building relationships.
• Keep it short and concise.
• Each coach is responsible for checking in with admin to encourage tech growth.
• Bits and bytes, after school workshops, voluntary, weekly.
• Offer out of class time for PD. Each teacher is doing this 2-5 days per year. These were former curriculum building days.
• MYP technology…using design cycle. Tech is integrated in curriculum. Tech teachers team teach with teachers for those classes.
• Because of this, teachers are working with more and more tech coaches to design curriculum.
• Expectation is that you will meet tech standards through units of inquiry. Meet with grade levels of teachers. Ask, what is unit? what are outcomes? what is summative assessment? what is formative assessment? Then offer 4 other ways to do it. Then he goes in to help them teach it….refuses to take over completely.
• each teacher with coach minimum 2 times per month of planning….average 10- 12 times of co-teaching per year. 1:40 ratio
• Calendar – map out time for this, time for that (time to admin LMS, time to meet with teachers, etc.)
• Portion of each department meeting is dedicated to tech. Run by teachers or coach.