4. Seek out Web-based professional development. I am finding that Web-based training is very appealing to classroom teachers simply because there is no time in a school day to learn how to use/integrate technology. In many districts today, planning time has been significantly reduced. This leaves teachers with either early morning, after school, weekend, or Web-based training as the only options for technolgoy professional development. Web-based training, if designed effectively and utilized rich multimedia, gives teachers convenient anytime, anwhere training. In fact, I created a Blackboard course about Blackbord that utilizes interactive streaming flash video. If a teacher wants to learn how to create and and suggestions for integrating a wiki in a Blackboard course, they simply watch a streaming video on how to accomplish this. This, then, allows teachers to apply skills and have complete control over their own learning/training pace. I think more teachers need to inquire/push for Web-based technology professional development to their I.T. departments and administrators; not just be provided with hyperlinks to online tutorials that merely show you how to use educational software.
Follow up article to the SETDA report released in Nov 08, documenting effective appraoch to ed. tech PD, with school model samples.
