For the past couple weeks, I have explored ISTE Coaching Standard 4b – Design, develop, and implement technology-rich professional learning programs that model principles of adult learning and promote digital age best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment. To try to understand how professional learning specifically impacts the use of education technology.
Our learning objective for this module expected us to “explore best practices in educational technology professional development.” I directed my learning towards the question of why should professional learning surround educational technology and not interweave EdTech with instructional development?
I have recently heard from several districts around the US through our ECT program that they are moving away from whole stand-alone EdTech departments and going towards having one person dedicated to EdTech in each major subject at the district level. I think it demonstrates the changing times for technology as it has become so crucial within education that separating education and technology is simply doing a disservice to the students. In a recent article by EdSurge News “Why Every School’s EdTech Department Should Make Themselves Obsolete,” Nate Green states this exact hypothesis basically there might still be a need for a whole team to be dedicated to just technology integration but soon the whole department should make itself obsolete because the other instructional leadership teams should be self-sufficient when it comes to technology integration. As Green states “The biggest problem with the Technology Integration Specialist (TIS) is that as soon as a school hires one, it sends a message to another faculty that they no longer have to strive to be proficient in this area since it’s someone else’s job. Teachers may miss opportunities for sharing and collaboration with colleagues around using technology in the classroom—that to do so would be to encroach upon or duplicate the TIS’s work” (2017). It is important to create a group of teacher tech ambassadors, professional learning for teachers by teachers, change EdTech Leaders and TIS to instructional coaches.
Then to corroborate these findings Bishop also explains in the “Evaluation Report”, “the very definition of leadership is changing to include a broader array of people whose title may not associate them with leadership responsibilities, even though they express the language and action of leaders engaged in the work of improving learning” it may not mean that they will be in the traditional educational leadership roles like Principals, Deans, and Assistant Principals. These new instructional or subject area facilitators should be coaches amongst the staff who know district approved software or hardware in-depth and can serve as a new level of leadership. With the help of the Gates Foundation and several other contributors, the “Transforming Professional Learning in Washington State Project Evaluation Report” logically and empirically suggests ideas that teachers have thought all along in Washington state. Anecdotally as I was reading this report it became abundantly clear that several of the findings were just so logical if you have lived in the US public school sphere. When those professionals who are not in public school education want to approach a district-wide problem and they suggest the easiest possible solution it is sometimes difficult to explain why implementing the easiest solution will be difficult. The purpose of the report was logical as an example of these easily proposed plans that at the beginning they would “engage leaders in the work of developing effective processes and support structure to create a culture of collaboration that would positively impact educator knowledge and skills to improve student learning” (8). But in the end not so easy to implement changes like these instantaneously.
As Bishop and colleagues found while putting together the “Evaluation Report”. The necessary multi-layered process and protocol that would simultaneously need to change to create a new system were not so easy to execute in real-life or real-time. These inner district interconnected systems would be assisted if the new “teacher leaders” status the state would put into place they should also adopt specific universal standards for professional learning for educators. Even though The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided 2.4 million dollars to fund a three-year project to support professional learning there were several limitations that even this amazing organization was not ready for in terms of Limitations
1. Student achievement data at the K-3 levels is limited.
2. Fidelity of the professional learning initiatives is outside the control of the evaluators.
3. The ability to generalize findings outside of the selected districts is limited.
4. The disaggregation of SAI2 data by evaluators is limited to the school building level.
5. The SAI2 and other relevant teacher data can be connected to individual teachers for statistical analyses (with anonymity maintained). (15)
Despite the limitations the purpose and outcome are worthwhile because “When carefully designed and thoughtfully applied, technology can accelerate, amplify, and expand the impact of effective teaching practices. However, to be transformative, educators need to have the knowledge and skills to take full advantage of technology-rich learning environments. In addition, As the US Department of Education states in their Office of Educational Technology Introduction, the roles of PK–12 classroom teachers and post-secondary instructors, librarians, families, and learners all will need to shift as technology enables new types of learning experiences.”
And although there still lies some resistance to change in terms of educational technology I think most are coming to the conclusion that students’ lives are better off in the long run if their education includes technology. But “to inform these adjustments at every level within the system, educators needed a deeper understanding of how data could be used to inform decisions as well as the individual practices of educators” (11). Even though the idea of a singular educational technology department may be going to the wayside I think this is a sign of advancement because it means that each subject might be begrudgingly accepting that they use technology and might benefit from someone who is on their team but also is an expert in tech. But “for these systemic changes in learning and teaching to occur, education leaders need to create a shared vision for how technology best can meet the needs of all learners and to develop a plan that translates the vision into action” (2017).
Resources:
Bishop, D, Lumpe, A., Henrikson, R, & Crane, C. (2016). Transforming Professional Learning in Washington State – Project Evaluation Report. Seattle Pacific University: Seattle, WA.
Green, N. (2017, December 11). Why Every School’s Edtech Department Should Make Themselves Obsolete – EdSurge News. Retrieved January 08, 2018, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-12-11-why-every-school-s-edtech-department-should-make-themselves-obsolete
US Department of Education (Ed.). (2017). Introduction of Office of Educational Technology. Retrieved January 18, 2018, from https://tech.ed.gov/netp/introduction/
