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Professional Development for Educational Technology

Stacey Carachure

EDU 352 Foundations of Educational Technology

Instructor: Susan Cannon

May 14, 2017

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Educators often lack adequate professional development in order to implement new

technology into their classrooms in an effective way to support the curriculum. Standard 5 states

Engage in professional growth and leadership. Teachers continuously improve their

professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and

professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and

resources (ISTE,2008). Without proper professional development, teachers cant be expected to

be effective participants in global learning, demonstrate digital literacy leadership, or reflect on

current research.

Often what happens is a school will get a new piece of technology, pressure the teachers

to use it, the teachers will not have the tools to integrate it, so the technology is underutilized.

Professional development needs to be viewed as an ongoing part of teachers professional lives

and needs to focus on a connection to student learning, hands-on technology use, and new roles

for teachers, a variety of learning experiences, administrative support, and curriculum-specific

applications (Professional Development, n.d.). Teacher professional development is intended to

support student achievement, so teachers need to be digitally fluent on the technology available

to them, but also understand how to implement it in their classrooms to support their students on

a daily basis.

However, a school administrator might say that there is just no funding to pay for more

teacher training. Sometime the school can afford to buy the computers, but because funding is so

tight, the teachers are expected to use their own time and resources to figure out how and when

to use the technology. I'm not sure if there is a win-win for this situation, but I do think teachers

are sometimes too prideful to see the value in learning from the students themselves. This
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generation is so tech savvy it's crazy, I'm learning from my own kids all the time. I don't see

anything wrong with a learn as we go approach sometimes. Learning together supports a

community feeling for the students also.

To learn more about this issue, consider visiting the following websites:

https://thejournal.com/articles/2013/06/04/6-technology-challenges-facing-education.aspx?

=THE21

http://www.sreb.org/10-issues-ed-tech-2013

http://all4ed.org/articles/making-technology-count-lack-of-support-poor-professional-

development-and-pedagogical-beliefs-limit-teachers-use-of-technology/
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References

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). ISTE standards for teachers.

Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-T_PDF.pdf

Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada V., Freeman, A., & Ludgate, H. (2013).

NMC Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 edition. Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2013-

horizon-report-k12.pdf

Professional Development - Technology. (n.d.). Retrieved May 03, 2017, from

https://www.edutopia.org/groups/technology-tools/417116