Professional Development

Professional Development

     When it comes to instructional technology, it is the role and responsibility of the educational leader to identify and provide needed professional development. Instructional technology is difficult to define but a good and coherent definition holds that it is “the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management and evaluation of processes and resources used for learning.” Professional development, on the other hand, refers to the different forms of training, education, and advanced professional learning that enables individuals to enhance their knowledge, competence, skill, and effectiveness over a certain domain. In the case of the educational leader, professional development is used to enable teachers, educators, and other administrators in how to use this training, education, and learning in the classroom. In terms of instructional technology, the educational leader has the role of assisting educators within the school how best to use the latest and newest technologies to instruct students in the classroom. This means integrating technology with other instructional tools for the best learning outcomes of the individual students and educators.

     Take SMART Technology like SMART Boards. Essentially these are interactive white boards outfitted with touchscreens and other new technologies that enable instruction beyond what the traditional white board or chalk board was capable. The educational leader might require that all classrooms in the school be outfitted with this new technology. But if the teacher doesn’t know how to use the SMART Board, the educational leader might just be wasting a lot of valuable money that could be used elsewhere. Professional development techniques, however, can teach educators how the new technology works and how to best implement it within the classroom.

Figure 1: A SMART Board in action

Professional Development Opportunities and Resources

     There are many opportunities and resources open to the educational leader especially when enabling educators to use new instructional technologies. As with the SMART Board, the educational leader might simply tell educators how the technology works and how it can be used in this classroom. This will likely be ineffective. Other more effective methods would include having educators already proficient in the use of the technology teach other educators how to use the technology. The educational leader is then given the opportunity to increase the confidence of certain educators. He could also use the resource of peer education and have the educators break up into small groups and use the SMART Board together. There, they could learn on their own and as a group how best to use the tool. The educational leader could then ask each of the groups to present what they have learned to the rest of the groups.

This approach would have multiple benefits:

• Educators will intermingle and develop beneficial relationships that enable them to feel more comfortable in seeking peer assistance outside of the professional development session.

• Each educator will feel empowered by being given the ability to learn new things on their own.

• Educators will learn new pedagogical tools such as the use of small group and peer education which can be brought into the classroom along with the new instructional technology.

• The educational leader will no longer seem like a distant, or even hostile, force but a partner in learning who wishes to bring all of the educators together, including him- or herself, as equals.

Instructional Technology and the Value of Professional Development

     The value of professional development as it concerns instructional technology is incredible. It brings together educators not simply as educators but as peers while also teaching them what it feels like to be a student. They must listen to the educational leader in order to learn about the new technologies in the same way that a student listens and learns from them. In this way, educators can better relate to their students because they will have recent experience being students themselves.

     Further, the educators are no longer left to learn how to use these technologies on their own. They will be given the knowledge as to how to best implement the technology within the classroom. Thus, when they introduce new technologies such as SMART Boards into the class, they are well-aware of how to use them. There need be no fear of humiliation in front of a group of technologically savvy students who may be happy to point out that the teacher knows less than they.