Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

In schools today budgets are tight.  Professional development dollars are shrinking.  In my case, our district just instituted four furlough days; all of them faculty professional development days. Luckily we like to plan ahead. In the beginning of the school year we voted to divide one of our "Flex" PD days into several smaller sessions. This means we took one of the 3 professional development days front-loaded in the beginning of the school year and agreed to make up the hours over the course of the school year. This works for our faculty. After all, in the beginning of the school year teachers are focused on setting up curriculum and classrooms. Dispersing one of these days allows us to target topics or issues that might arise after the school year begins. When we began talking about what type of PD we needed it was different across the board- different grade levels and departments had different needs.  Our solution was to develop our own PD Learning Series whe...

When students are released for summer break teachers may not come to work each day but it doesn't mean they aren't learning.  Each year thousands of teachers seek out opportunities to continue their professional growth.  This summer Coonley teachers had a chance to work at their own pace to learn about technology tools that could assist them with formative and summative assessments. I designed an online professional development website titled "Coonley Technology Road Trip" where teachers could learn the basics about these tools, create sample artifacts and then blog about their experience.  Blogging offered teachers a chance to hear from their peers how they thought the tools could be used in their learning situation.  It also allowed me as a technology coach to see how everyone was feeling about specific tools so I can reach out this school year to offer additional support. The tools featured aren't all exclusively made for assessment purposes but like any go...