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Even more than selecting the right devices for the classroom, professional development is the key ingredient in successful 1:1 computing programs in K-12 classrooms.

that everyone is working at the appropriate level of understanding, allowing students to construct learning and providing learning in easy-to-digest nuggets. Those principles will also help build effective professional development.

Next, design training to fill in gaps and give teachers what they want. Ensure that each session is designed to be self-contained so that teachers can choose to attend workshops only in the areas where they need extra learning.

Collective Participation:

Training takes time

5 Key Points of Professional Development

allowing teachers to actively engage in their own learning can help them retain lessons on using technology to solve classroom challenges.

Active Learning

Sustained Duration:

Content Focus: When providing technology coaching, concrete examples are key

K–12 teachers are interested in adopting technology, but low confidence in their abilities to use it well enough to make the integration worth the investment is a significant barrier. 

K–12 teachers are interested in adopting technology, but low confidence in their abilities to use it well enough to make the integration worth the investment is a significant barrier. 

5 Key Points of Professional Development

allowing teachers to actively engage in their own learning can help them retain lessons on using technology to solve classroom challenges.

Training takes time

If organizations are to develop a capacity to work with mental models then it will be necessary for people to learn new skills and develop new orientations, and for their to be institutional changes that foster such change. ‘Entrenched mental models… thwart changes that could come from systems thinking’ (ibid.: 203). Moving the organization in the right direction entails working to transcend the sorts of internal politics and game playing that dominate traditional organizations. In other words it means fostering openness (Senge 1990: 273-286). It also involves seeking to distribute business responsibly far more widely while retaining coordination and control. Learning organizations are localized organizations (ibid.: 287-301).

it’s the capacity to hold a share picture of the future we seek to create’ (1990: 9). Such a vision has the power to be uplifting – and to encourage experimentation and innovation. Crucially, it is argued, it can also foster a sense of the long-term, something that is fundamental to the ‘fifth discipline’.

When there is a genuine vision (as opposed to the all-to-familiar ‘vision statement’), people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to. But many leaders have personal visions that never get translated into shared visions that galvanize an organization… What has been lacking is a discipline for translating vision into shared vision – not a ‘cookbook’ but a set of principles and guiding practices. The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine commitment and enrolment rather than compliance. In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt. (Senge 1990: 9)

By attending to purpose, leaders can cultivate an understanding of what the organization (and its members) are seeking to become. One of the issues here is that leaders often have strengths in one or two of the areas but are unable, for example, to develop systemic understanding. A key to success is being able to conceptualize insights so that they become public knowledge, ‘open to challenge and further improvement’ (ibid.: 356).

In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations were people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models – that is they are responsible for learning…. Learning organizations will remain a ‘good idea’… until people take a stand for building such organizations. Taking this stand is the first leadership act, the start of inspiring (literally ‘to breathe life into’) the vision of the learning organization. (Senge 1990: 340)

In essence, ‘the leaders’ task is designing the learning processes whereby people throughout the organization can deal productively with the critical issues they face, and develop their mastery in the learning disciplines’ (ibid.: 345).

One of the important things to grasp here is that stewardship involves a commitment to, and responsibility for the vision, but it does not mean that the leader owns it. It is not their possession. Leaders are stewards of the vision, their task is to manage it for the benefit of others (hence the subtitle of Block’s book – ‘Choosing service over self-interest’). Leaders learn to see their vision as part of something larger. Purpose stories evolve as they are being told, ‘in fact, they are as a result of being told’ (Senge 1990: 351). Leaders have to learn to listen to other people’s vision and to change their own where necessary. Telling the story in this way allows others to be involved and to help develop a vision that is both individual and shared.

People need to be able to act together. When teams learn together, Peter Senge suggests, not only can there be good results for the organization, members will grow more rapidly than could have occurred otherwise.

It is about fostering learning, for everyone. Such leaders help people throughout the organization develop systemic understandings. Accepting this responsibility is the antidote to one of the most common downfalls of otherwise gifted teachers – losing their commitment to the truth. (Senge 1990: 356)

Find and Develop Those Teacher Leaders

They Have Great Communication Skills

They Are Adept at Problem Solving

They Are Decisive

They Create a Safe-to-Fail Environment

They Are Authentic

Emotional intelligence is knowing your strengths and weaknesses as well as your emotional triggers. Knowing this will allow you to better focus on the people you interact with, so that you can recognize and interpret what's happening within them, and manage your interactions with them based on their emotions.

Emotional intelligence is knowing your strengths and weaknesses as well as your emotional triggers. Knowing this will allow you to better focus on the people you interact with, so that you can recognize and interpret what's happening within them, and manage your interactions with them based on their emotions.

There are always fires to put out and deadlines to meet, but when you don't have a lot of extra time, setting time aside to learn can be difficult. However, professional development and continued growth are the only surefire ways to make sure you don't get left behind in the tech world.

The only thing missing is a smart phone app, which should be out later this summer. 

Here’s a quick checklist to follow:

From there, publicize a target timeframe for the tech rollout, and be transparent about it. If there are setbacks, explain what happened and why. Keep employees engaged and up-to-date on what’s happening. Ultimately, this engagement will help you get to the finish line with your goals for this new technology solution. Because if people aren’t positively motivated, even the best new tools won’t be helpful.

Finally, it’s important to understand how long an implementation cycle can take. Because of the nature of today’s consumer-led technologies, this is often a process that can take more than a year or longer.

For example, you can have the right technology implemented poorly.

Or the wrong technology implemented correctly.

From your perspective, you’re bringing improvement—saving employees time, allowing them to be more flexible, improving productivity, improving sales and profits, etc. But from employees’ and departments’ point of view, you’re rocking the boat, telling them to change how they’ve always been doing things, give up precious tools, learn and carry around new devices and the like.

As soon as reasonably possible, try to “institutionalize” the new technology and “show employees that you are transitioning from the old way of working to the new one,”

part of the routine of the way the place works,”

“Rewarding the behavior you want to see is much more effective than penalizing the behavior you don’t want to see,” says Mankins. You’ll need to know “which employees are adopting the technology and which kind of rewards means the most to them.”

Win hearts and minds by emphasizing how the new technology benefits the organization and makes employees’ lives easier Encourage adoption by rewarding employees in ways that are most meaningful to them Build the new technology into the routines and rhythms of the workday as soon as possibl

Pick a technology that’s more complicated than it needs to be; for a swift adoption, select a system that’s approachable and intuitive Overlook the importance of getting your most influential employees on board early in the process; they will help you bring around others Leap to punish employees who don’t use the technology; penalties should be a last resort if incentives and rewards aren’t working

“Adoption needs to happen teacher by teacher, grade by grade.”

By helping educators develop the skills and confidence to grow professionally, school districts are investing in their students and building cultures that embrace technology. “It doesn’t matter how many devices you have,” Mac says. “If you don’t know how to integrate technology with teaching, it becomes just another add on.”