School Type: Public	School Setting: Rural
Level: K-12	School Design: Traditional
Content Presented By:
NEIRTEC, Northeast & Islands Regional Technology in Education Consortium

Summary

The practice: Professional Development - School leaders must provide relevant, meaningful, and ongoing professional development for all staff.

• Online professional development project emphasizes the importance of integrating online work with ongoing local professional development efforts.
• The facilitating organization (Education Development Center) has helped staff determine ways to articulate long-term goals.
• The facilitating organization has also helped staff determine how they should select teams and ensure that team members are supported by their district's technology and professional development departments.

In 1998, EdTech Leaders Online ? (ETLO), a national program implemented by the Education Development Center (EDC) in Massachusetts, began its work with five rural districts in the Macon Ridge section of Louisiana. EDC and its partners--TERC, Learning Innovations at WestEd, and the Education Alliance at Brown University--comprise NEIRTEC, the Northeast & Islands Regional Technology in Education Consortium, a group funded by the U.S. Department of Education to help educational leaders at the state, district, and school levels address the many challenges involved in putting technology to effective use. ETLO prepares interdisciplinary teams of teachers and administrators to become online professional development specialists in educational technology. The teams participate in an intensive program that trains them to deliver online workshops to colleagues. Once trained, the teams go on to facilitate online courses selected from the ETLO course catalogue or custom-designed to meet their own local needs. As the district personnel run the workshops, they continue to receive support and mentoring from other online professional development teams and EDC staff and consultants.

The project emphasizes the importance of integrating online work with ongoing local professional development efforts. EDC encourages district teams to work face-to-face when necessary. The organization has also helped staff determine how they should select teams, how to ensure that team members are supported by their district's technology and professional development departments, and ways to articulate long-term goals.

Parts of this text were adapted with permission from Barbara Treacy, Glenn Kleiman, and Kirsten Peterson, "Successful Online Professional Development," in Learning & Leading with Technology, September 2002. Copyright (c) ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int'l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved. Available at http://www.edtechleaders.org/Resources/articles/SuccessfulOPD.pdf.

• Professional development should be continuous and on-going, involving follow-up and support for further learning, including support from sources external to the school that can provide necessary resources and new perspectives.  

  [Top]   [Next]

This resource is developed and maintained by The Education Alliance at Brown University. Seed funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Send comments to: loom@alliance.brown.edu