Staff Development
Stevan Kalmon (kalmon@bvsd.k12.co.us)
Mon, 24 Mar 1997 11:08:35 -0700 (MST)
Dave Thomas writes:
>
> If we have learned anything so far in Network Montana, it is that
> continuous support and training are essential. Without a significant
> investment in staff development, it seems unlikely that the promise of
> the new technologies will be realized. So, how do the rest of you think
> we can use our collective influence to make staff development ABOUT
> on-line content and computational resources a significant part of school
> district technology plans?
>
Districts, of course, generally make some provisions for staff development
(the eduburese is "teacher training"), but almost always it's a few hours
of workshops on teachers' own time. That will never work, both because
it's not continuous and because it's not contextual (not to mention how
unfair it is to the teachers, who, methinks, already have plenty to do
on their "own" time). That's why we're trying the Working Shops approach
that I described in my initial post. Naturally, we had to get outside
support for that kind of process (although it's surprisingly inexpensive
-- basically, the cost of half-day subs for a few teachers each week);
and our District board didn't really like the idea (teachers not serving
their student "clients" full-time). So the challenge now is to
demonstrate success, either to the Board or to the public (which then
will put political pressure on the Board). That will take some time,
since we're talking about more than a year of curriculum development and
implementation. But real stuff takes time.
A piece I can't resists: I don't think it's about developing "on-line
content" and/or "computational resources" per se; it's about developing
real learning work that happen really to need such content and resources.
Stevan Kalmon
New Vista High School
Center for LifeLong Learning and Design