The 10 Characteristics of Effective #Edtech PD

We all know that school districts often purchase technology with no real plan in place for teacher professional development. Those of us in the Edtech community beg for more time to train and support our teachers, but even then those trainings end up taking the form of one-time, sit-and-get workshops with little to no follow-up.

As I conducted research for Master's thesis, I focused on the components of effective edtech professional development. After organizing notes from a multitude of peer-reviewed articles, I synthesized the top 10 characteristics of effective PD based on their mentions in the literature.

I offer them below so we can pursue more impactful forms of professional development for our teachers (and if you're desperately interested in the reference list and full literature review, you can find it here.)

So with no further ado, effective edtech professional development needs to include...

1. Clear, content-specific connections to classroom practice
   The most frequently mentioned characteristic of effective PD is that it has a clear link to a teacher's content area and their classroom practice. To accomplish this, we may need to restructure the way we present PD so that teachers can be clustered together based on content areas. We may also need to consider blending our PD so we present a whole group, face-to-face session on the general functions of a digital tool, then allow teachers to choose an online pathway that walks them through the applications of the tool in their content area. Whatever route we choose, the adult learner is focused on practical application and learns to solve problems, so we need to make sure we provide clear connections to their daily context.


2. Time for collaboration and reflection
   Without reflection, there's a danger that the teacher's PD experience could be misunderstood and misapplied in the classroom. For example, if a teacher walks away with plans for implementing at only the lowest levels of integration, they've missed a chance to increase rigor and engage students. Reflection and collaboration provides time for teachers to develop plans and for us as facilitators to make sure that our intended takeaways are actually taken away...


3. Extended duration
   The duration of effective PD includes both an extended span of time to implement the new learning as well as a high number of contact hours outside of the initial session. One-time workshops are ineffective in changing teacher practice, especially when there is little to no follow up outside of the training. Positioning our training in the context of regularly scheduled Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) or other forms of job-embedded PD allow us to extend the contact time we have with teachers and support them in their new learning.


4. Non-threatening support and follow up
   The teacher's support shouldn't also be the teacher's evaluator. This is where the role of coaches comes  into play. The teacher has to feel that they have a partner in implementation who will respect their need for confidentiality as they incubate new ideas and attempt to execute new plans in their classroom. 


5. An engaging and active format
   Often, if we were the teachers in our own PD, we'd be checking Facebook too. If we're not doing our part to model active learning and engaging instruction, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the slack-jawed faces staring back at us. Teachers need "sandbox time" to experiment and play with new technology, and it should happen during our sessions where we can provide structure, guidance and support.


6. The same technology teachers will use in the classroom
   With our current Chromebook pilot, we made assumptions early on that teachers would understand how to use the devices. Based on that assumption, we moved to quickly into digital tools without making sure teachers could navigate their way around a different interface than what they were use to. Teachers need to experience the actual classroom technology to understand what student's will experience as they use the tools. Additionally, greater learning transfer will happen if what teachers experience in training matches what they will be using in the classroom.


7.  Modeling by colleagues
   I've been out of the classroom 8 months (and here are some lessons I've learned). In the eyes of a teacher, I'm out of touch. Whether that's true or not, perception can quickly become reality. The more we can get classroom teachers presenting the PD and sharing what they do with real live students, the more buy-in we'll have from the teachers we're training. 


8. Institutional support
   How does your campus or district show support for your early adopters? Do they allow them to take risks, make mistakes, and blaze a new trail? Or do they flog them at the first sign of a data dip, blame the devices, and remove the technology from the classroom? For PD to be effective, teachers must feel they have the support of the broader institution to take the often uncertain path of pushing through to new and higher levels of learning.


9. Processes for evaluating teacher learning
   Exit surveys are an awful way to evaluate professional development, but that seems to be our default method to determine if PD has been effective. To truly evaluate and refine our PD, we need to find ways to see if what teachers have learned is reaching the classroom, changing teacher practice, and impacting students. How do we do that? I'm not sure. There are so many variables that go into effective teaching that it becomes difficult to tease out exactly what is making an impact. If anyone is using metrics to measure PD that are working, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section.


10. The feeling that the time invested is outweighed by the benefits gained
    We've all walked out of training sessions that were a complete waste of our lives. So for PD to be effective, the teacher has to feel like the time they just put in will result in positive changes in their classroom. It's incumbent on us as facilitators to make sure that connection is clear, so that when teachers leave our initial face-to-face, they have plans for immediate implementation with their students.

That's what the literature says. What would you add to the list?

Techie Holidays Lunch-and-Learn

One of the issues I'm finding when it comes to training teachers in technology is the priority of other content areas. Having taught a state-tested subject and grade level, I get it: there's an immense amount of pressure to keep the data where it should be and develop teachers in their core area. However, this crowds out the time that's necessary to develop teachers in how they use technology.

One of the solutions I'm exploring is voluntary Lunch-and-Learns. Inspired by this "Innovation in Action" column by Rick Czyz, I'm calling this first run "Techie Holidays," and I'm pleased with it so far. I start by posting invitations on the door of every classroom in the building the day before, followed by an email invite. The day of the Lunch-and-Learn, I set up in the campus conference room (with snacks and gift card giveaways) and teachers come to learn a few new tech tools in about 10 minutes.

The turnout has been strong, with 70%-80% of teachers attending on each campus. I plan to do two more of these this year, as it seems to be a workable solution to getting teachers trained in the midst of all their other campus and classroom requirements.

This form of PD isn't about in-depth conversations over edtech philosophies or the finer points of SAMR, it's about relationship-building and some "quick-win" tech tools. And I've learned quite a bit about what teachers need just by sitting and talking with them over some cookies and cider.

If you're interested in using the "Techie Holidays" resources, the link to my Drive folder with handouts, etc. is below.

"Techie Holidays" Resource Folder

Techie Holidays Training Website

The Results of Teacher Choice in #Edtech Trainings

Teachers are professionals. Their professional learning needs to reflect that.

Earlier this summer, as I started to think about what treating teachers as professionals actually looks like, I began toying with the idea of teacher-driven trainings. What if, instead of telling teachers what they were going to learn about, I presented them with a set of digital tools that would work in their content area, and let them choose what they learned? Are teachers capable of making such a decision for themselves?

I decided they were, so I developed a structure that worked quite well for my four 3.5 hour sessions. I certainly don't have everything ironed out yet, but I'm pleased with the initial results. Here's the flow of each session, and at the bottom are links to the sites that I built to keep everything organized and on track.

1. Teachers start by posting to Padlet how they're already using (or not using) technology to teach their content.


2. Briefly (and informally) have a conversation about their posts and the tools they're using, validate the work they're doing with technology, and start making connections between what they already do and some of the tools they would see during the session.


3. Introduce the agenda, and be prepared for people not to believe that they're actually going to get to choose what they learn.


4. Using Nearpod, present brief summaries of the digital tools they can choose from. This also included some poll questions about people's technological comfort level and the occasional quiz question to get the engagement up.


5. Teachers come back to the training site and vote for their top 4 tools. (It was actually funny how long it took some folks to choose...)


6. Start with the tool that got the most votes. Model and walk through its main features (10-15 minutes), clarify any confusion, then give 15-20 minutes of "sandbox time" for teachers to explore, talk, and start brainstorming ideas of how they can use it for instruction.


7. Lather, rinse, repeat with the next two or three tools.


8. Send everyone to a Google Slides presentation and give them 15 minutes to fill out their grade level, content, TEKS (state standard) and a tool they could use to enhance how they teach that concept.


9. Everyone gets 40 seconds to share their idea as their slide is shown on the screen.


10. Fill out a Forms survey for feedback.

That's it. Nothing terribly earth-shattering, just a training based on the fact that since teachers are the gatekeepers of their classroom, they should have a say in what tools they are going to use.

The best part of the whole thing was during sandbox time when I got to walk around and just talk to people. One anatomy and physiology teacher mentioned that they didn't have many online resources, so I was able to introduce her to BioDigital Human. My Friday afternoon group liked Nearpod so much that they asked if I could train them on that before we got into the science tools. Absolutely!

The main issue I'm still facing is how to engage the intentionally disengaged. If you're going to walk across the room to start planning schedules and lessons with your grade level partner (yes, I saw you...), there's really not much I can do to stop you. You're a grown person. Maybe it should be a reflection piece for me that I didn't have something that you felt you could use. I'm still thinking through it.

The only other problem was that our district network went down before my Thursday afternoon session. We stitched together a hodgepodge of smartphone hot spots to get most people online. Ah, Plan B...

But even with the occasional rudeness and network complications, I'm motivated by the feedback* from the exit surveys. It's especially flattering when teachers who don't even teach a content area come back for another session because they felt they learned so much in their first one. To me, that speaks volumes.

I'm just pleased that my teachers didn't let me down when I decided to treat them like the professionals they are and give them a choice in what they learned.

---

*If you want to see teachers' feedback, here's the link to their unedited survey responses, even the part about how I need to slow down a bit. They're right, I do. I just get so excited...

Training Websites

Using Technology to Teach Writing

Using Technology to Teach Social Studies

Using Technology to Teach Math

Using Technology to Teach Science

Planning #edtech trainings? Do some of what I did...(and also don't...)

How do you get 19 teachers up to speed on the digital tools they will need in their new 1:1 classrooms? You have an Institute! The brave educators in our district who are piloting GAFE and Chromebooks recently spent 4 days together adding to their toolbox and hammering out what 1:1 will look like at their grade level and in their content area.

This was my first time working with a team to plan any sort of extended professional development. We got some things right from the beginning, made extensive adjustments in the middle, and have many notes that we'll improve on for next year. Everything worked out well in the end, and here are 12 reflections from how we ran our Institute that you can learn from as you plan your own PD.

1. It's not about the tool. But...
   Our teachers had never used Chromebooks before and very few had used GAFE. So what were they apprehensive about? Chromebooks and GAFE. What did we start with? Vision, inspiration, discussion, expectations, ISTE standards, 21st century teaching and learning...anything but what they really wanted to hear about.
   
   Those other things are completely necessary, but I think everyone would have been much more attentive to the more philosophical aspects of the pilot if we had started with a concrete introduction to the basics. When teachers have questions like "When will I actually get my devices?" and "How will my students turn in their work on this thing?" floating around in their heads, it's really hard to focus on the intangibles.
   
   So next time, we will start with a brief overview of our district's vision for 1:1, a quick conversation about how coaches and teachers will work together, and then we will dive straight into what teachers really want to know about: the tools. 


2. Train with the tools teachers will use.
   We did this well. We used Google Classroom to distribute assignments and ideas during the training, collaborated in Docs, and created Slides presentations to share out lesson plans and ideas. By the end, teachers were planning how they could set up collaborative folders in Drive and talking about using Hangouts for ongoing PD throughout the year.
   
   Not only did this method give the participants more comfort with the tools, it let them see 1:1 from a student perspective. This helped them identify speed bumps their students might face and got them planning for how they would address them before they ever came up.


3. Have clear short-term goals.
   Early on in the first day, one teacher who was apprehensive about the program put up her hands and said "Just tell me what you want me to do!" She wasn't being confrontational, she was being honest. She wanted to know exactly what "extra" responsibilities this was going to involve.
   
   We have long-term goals for the pilot, but we hadn't turned those into any meaningful short-term benchmarks. So I spent the evening of day 2 talking to a friend of mine who's in a similar position, and his solution for his team was to develop goals for every six weeks, stated in terms of what both teachers and students will be expected to do.
   
   With his permission, I stole his structure, and on our final day we walked our teachers through exactly how many digital citizenship lessons (which we were providing) they needed to teach, the minimum number of assignments students needed to submit through Google Classroom every six weeks, and the precise strategies we would use to work on research and information fluency.
   
   It was definitely a win when that same teacher smiled, thanked us, and said "That's all I've been asking for."


4. Develop a mutual coach-teacher agreement.
   In groups, teachers and coaches read two excellent articles on what a coach-teacher relationship looks like and what good coaches do. We then recorded our own takeaways from the articles, and in groups came up with our top 3 requirements for how coaches and teachers should work together during the pilot.
   
   Voice, choice, control, partnership and confidentiality were recurring themes, and the discussions we had about those areas helped us develop a framework for each person's role in the pilot. As a coach, I needed to hear what was important to my teachers so I could support them in the way they need, not the way I think they need.
   
   

   

   Placemat activity on coach-teacher relationships
   These hang in my office now.



5. It could have been 3 days.
   We took 4 days, with each day going from 8:00-4:00, but looking back at our pacing and structure, we could have done the same work in 3 days from 8:30-3:30. A one day difference may not seem like a huge deal, but when you're a teacher who is coming in on your summer break, the difference is massive. 


6. Team-building is NOT a waste of time.
   I'm intensely focused on efficiency, tasks and production. This is a useful bent in a lot of situations, but it can get in the way of developing relationships. Each day, my much more relationally-oriented partner in blended learning led the team in activities that built camaraderie as well as gave them some usable ideas for their classrooms.
   
   Since these teachers are the only ones in the entire district who are in this pilot, they need to get to know the other people who are going to be facing the same challenges as them. So even though I tend to jump right into the learning when I lead a training, I see the value in taking a time to let teachers connect over a safe, shared task.


7. Mix up the seating.
   We're all creatures of habit, gravitating toward the people we know and staking our claim to a seat like we do with the pews at church. In response to this aspect of human nature, we used protocols like Clock Buddies to mix teachers up and get them sharing. This worked great and let them connect across campuses and grade levels to share ideas and get feedback on their lessons.


8. Teachers need "sandbox time" with new tools.
   We preach discovery learning, inquiry and constructivist philosophy with regard to our students, and I've come to discover that the needs of teachers are no different. Once a tool is presented and they have the basic idea of how it functions, they need time to explore and play (hence, "sandbox time") to really understand how it could fit in their classroom. Don't cut that time short, it's the most important thing there is.


9. Planning time needs clear deliverables.
   On day 2, we gave teachers about 2 hours of planning time in the afternoon to work with some of the GAFE tools they had learned that day. It was a good idea, but it wasn't structured enough with a clear objective, so teachers weren't able to focus their efforts toward a specific product.
   
   So on day 3, we only took an hour for planning and called it "TEKS, Tool, Activity" (if you're not a Texan, the TEKS are our state standards). Teachers chose one standard, one digital tool, and created one activity they could use in their classroom. Then they contributed to a collaborative Slides presentation and shared their activity in triads at the end, receiving feedback from other group members. Knowing that there was a deliverable involved brought a sense of urgency and focus to the planning time, and the clear objective helped them not to feel overwhelmed. They accomplished more in one hour than they had in two the previous day.
   
   The final day they took that activity and turned it into a complete lesson, with both traditional and technological elements. This chunking and scaffolding was much more effective and our teachers came up with same fantastic ideas for their students.


10. Listen to the content of the chaos.
    When teachers get loud, they're either bored or engaged. Confusing. What I learned this week was to listen for the content of the chaos going on around me. If I'm conducting a training and teachers are so excited about something that they're having an in-depth conversation at their table about it, who am I to pull them out of it? That's when I need to take a step back and let them share.
    
    But if the conversation is off-topic, then I need to reconsider if my presentation is really relevant to their needs. Those situations are a good time to check in, take a break for a few minutes, or poll the group on how they're feeling about what we're working on. That can be wounding to my pride, but in the long run it creates a much more effective training.


11. Provide lunch.
    We didn't, and we should have. As we were debriefing at the end, one teacher said that she really wished that there had been lunch simply so they could all keep working. What?!? They were disappointed that they had to leave to get lunch and break the flow of what they were doing...man, I really love working with teachers. I don't think you get that kind of attitude in many other professions. So in this case, it wasn't as much about the food as it was about the networking, something teachers in this traditionally isolated profession don't typically get time to do.


12. "If you can't fail, it doesn't count."
    This pilot is a huge undertaking, the first of its kind in our district. It has the potential, like any project, to fail, which I realized that at the Institute as our vision collided with reality. But at the same time, I was reminded of the title of this book by Dave Guymon. The only way to do something great is to take a risk.
    
    We have incredible teachers who are buying in to the vision and are willing to change the way they teach for the sake of our students. We have committed coaches in place to be with them every step of the way, and incredible district administrators who believe this is the right thing to do for our kids. So sure, while it could fail, it could also be an incredible success (and of course, I think it will be). 

Adjusting and adapting mid-stream is part of any project that breaks new ground, and this Institute was a small snapshot of what this entire year will be like: plan, adjust, change, revamp, implement, evaluate, celebrate and reflect. I'm grateful to the teachers who let us experiment on them, and hopefully you can learn from these reflections on what ended up being a very rewarding, very productive week of training.

3 Smashing Tools to Create Online PD (Part 3)

The essential question of part 3 is "How do I distribute certificates to everyone who completes my online course?" The answer? Autocrat.



In the ever-expanding world of Add-Ons, all the indispensable ones seem to be coming out of New Visions Cloud Lab. These developers work closely with teachers to create tools that actually meet a need and solve a problem, and with Autocrat, they've knocked it out of the park.

Autocrat is a mail merge utility that can take all that data that accumulates over the course of a school year, merge it into formats that are actually useful (letters, reports, etc.), and can automatically email it to students or parents. According to New Visions, Autocrat has merged nearly 3.9 million documents since its release, so it looks like they're doing something right.

Using Autocrat to Create Certificates

You can set Autocrat to send certificates automatically after teachers complete a survey or course evaluation. (Wesley Fryer has a great video on this that seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet, so if anyone has the link, please put it in the comments and I'll add it to this post.)

In my professional development example, though, I'm manually checking responses and only running Autocrat if the teacher completes all the requirements. This means setting up a conditional merge (easy to do) so Autocrat only creates and emails certificates for the teachers that meet the completion criteria.

The Small Bytes playlist below starts with making your own basic certificate with merge tags, then goes step-by-step through creating your merge, setting up the email your teachers will receive, and creating a condition to only run certificates for the teachers who meet the criteria.

Once you've set up your merge, just send the link to your Classmill course out to your teachers and staff. Best of luck trying something new and smashing, flipping and blending your back-to-school professional development!