cc licensed flickr photo shared by U-g-g-B-o-y-(-Photograph-World-Sense-)
Yesterday at Forest Green School, we had a fantastic professional development session. It started with a 30-minute open session where staff were just able to take the time and write a blog post. As this is a new school wide initiative that will be trickling down to our students in the next month, I wanted to ensure that I gave them an opportunity to just spend some time writing a post and seeing what others wrote as well. It was a great opportunity for our staff to develop their own learning in this initiative and give them dedicated time to write. (We used this document to inspire some ideas)
After we came together and looked at each other’s posts, we then dived into the rest of our morning. As we are working on our second year of our teacher-led professional development plan, I talked with our staff about the importance of focusing on directly impacting student learning through our vision. I thought directly about the following quote:
“The challenge for school leaders, then, is to move their teachers beyond what Bernajean Porter calls adapting uses and into transforming uses. ” Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant
As we move forward, it is essential that our goals focus directly on how the impact and improve student learning. There is definitely a time where we need to focus on building staff capacity in new initiatives, but any successful professional development will shift this capacity from teacher to student to ensure we are “transforming” the way learning happens.
For example, as our staff continues to develop their capacity for blogging, how will we shift this practice from being simply a way of communicating with parents, students, and teachers, to a medium that positively impacts student learning? It is imperative not only for our students that we use blogging as a way to open up conversations and learn from each other, but it is also essential that all of our staff see the opportunities that blogging creates in our learning community. This cannot come without a certain amount of understanding of the technology (how to write a post, hyperlink, etc.), but we must continuously look on how it will impact learning and why we are using this in the first place.
As an instructional leader within a school, it is essential that I help to first build staff capacity, but the vision MUST positively impact student learning. This should be the goal of all professional development plans. Leaders must not only have this vision, but the patience to see it through.
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I am wondering about the technology that is available in your school. I have been thinking about a great many technology ideas to be integrated into the classroom; however, currently we can use up to 12 computer periods a semester in each course. I find that it's not enough. I would like to have at least one a week if we were going to blog in an English class. As a K-12 school, how do you determine usage for your classes?
We definitely need to increase the amount of computers in our school. We have about 80 computers for 240 kids at one site, and we are looking to increase that to about 120. Grade 5 and 6 will have laptops all the time this year. Nice to be able to run the budget as well
At the other site though, we need to increase the amount of technology in the building. We would probably increase by 30 computers in the school for 200 kids but this is at a non-traditional site with kids also working at home. If we do that, both sites could probably have technology a minimum of 1/3 of the day, every day.
Thanks for the comment!
We have about 150 computers (6 labs) and then an individual computer in each classroom (extremely antiquated and slow) for the teacher to complete online attendance and have access to the school system. There are 10-12 Smartboard rooms and they each have a better computer attached to it; otherwise, the technology doesn't work well.
We have 900+ students so I think your ratio overall is better. It's a high school, so there are classes that are designated to computer labs and some free periods. I believe that if everyone tried to use the computers 12x in each course, there wouldn't be enough availability; it's sometimes difficult to book computer time, and the labs are rarely unused.
Our computer allocation and support is determined at the board level, but our technician advocates for the school's needs. The principal bought the Smartboards by reducing departmental budgets by about 10% over two years.
They have installed wireless hubs in the school, but it's not accessible as they want to ensure that it will function well and have rules/protocol in place for usage. It's currently being piloted at our smaller sister high school that has about 300 students.
I would love to teach a class that's connected often…not necessarily all the time, but 1/2 of the time would be fantastic. There are so many great ideas that I'd like to try that are not yet possible.
Hi George – I like that you have made this a goal of your school, what a great way to communicate with colleagues, students and parents. I recently created a blog at blogger.com but I am not happy with a link that goes to "next blog" – I am new to blogging (too old I guess) – would you be able to give me some information on where you set your blog up – thanks George.
We set up our sites through WordPress Multi-User. To be honest, this is a little bit of work for set up but easy once you get going. If you, or someone you know is fairly strong with tech, I would be happy to let them know how we put everything together. I did all the initial set up for our staff so that it would be as easy for them as possible.
I love that you started PD with reflection and writing in the form of a blog. Such a neat transformation in the way that professional growth is handled!
I have seen so much growth in our school from the two years that I have been there. I have loved it! Thanks for your comment Kelly!
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I certainly have no objection to this, Mr. Halvorson. But how about we concentrate on getting everybody access to some kind of medical care first, eh? THEN we can worry about getting all the rich people to the “best” hospitals and “best” doctors.
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