I work in the P-12 arena. I am certified at
the elementary level. In the business and industry setting technology is being
used to enhance training effectiveness and efficiency. This approach can be
adapted for facilitating training in the public school environs. In the
corporate world, the two purposes for employing technology are to reduce
training time and costs and to ensure training effectiveness by using more
sophisticated evaluation techniques. Both of these would greatly benefit the
public school system. Oftentimes, teachers are in need of specific training and
development but are not able to sit in a classroom. Distance learning,
teleconference type classes and other methods would allow teachers more
flexibility with meeting their training needs. Schools could use outside
agencies to provide the training or if there is a specialist on campus or
within the district then that individual could provide it. There are several
avenues available. This could even be done small scale. For instance, if one teacher
had something she wanted to present to the campus or even a small group, she
could use a podcast or Skype. Meetings and group collaborations could even be
conducted as such. There is no end to the usefulness of technology on the
public school campus as it relates to teacher training. Evaluations could also
be simplified. Courses, projects and such could be evaluated at the close of
the presentation electronically. Oftentimes, evaluations are paper based and
tedious. This would make it faster and more accurate.
I also believe that if training could be done through distance learning, that would allow for more flexibility on the teacher's part on whether or not they could attend a training. I've taken distance learning classes and find that it's way better, than me having to drive another town. I also liked that even though he had students in his class, he let us all have conversations as a group, as if we were all in the same room.
ReplyDeleteHi Youshonda, I like your idea of electronic evaluations. The instructor knows exactly what he is looking for in the presentation, he could mark the areas that were present and also make notes in the grading area if he needed to go back later and make adjustments. That is a great idea, the grading of presentations were always one area that slowed me down and often times if I didn't make notes I might have missed something the group presented. Technology used correctly in the classroom could help make instruction more efficient and effective.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that our district does handle some of our required Professional Development courses in an online format. For example, the annual and bi-annual trainings that teachers need such as Bloodborne Pathogens, Cash Management, and Sexual Harassment are all online modules that we watch and then answer a series of questions as an assessment piece. It certainly makes getting those things done much simpler than trying to find time to go to Admin to watch them. Because we are able to do it at our campus or at home, Admin is not having to use personnel to manage schedules for classes and provide computer resources for watching the videos.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of podcasts or online trainings through Skype. My district conducts a form of this by offering some annual trainings on video (somewhat like Terry stated above). We all complete the video and answer some questions. These trainings are appreciated by everyone on campus. We can complete them when we have the time, rather than being pulled away from the various things we have to get done. I think offering more trainings in this way would really help teachers stay on-top of trainings and boost morale just a bit. It's hard to stay positive when you're being pulled in a thousand different directions at the same time. Online trainings would help.
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