Adapting Edtech Professional Development for the New World

Evan Obranovic, Director of Technology, Traverse City Area Public Schools

Evan Obranovic, Director of Technology, Traverse City Area Public Schools

Try as we might, there is no denying the drastic changes in education that are still reverberating from the COVID-19 pandemic. Overnight we went from in-person learning to full-on “emergency” remote education in an attempt to keep some type of normalcy and direction in our student's lives. While that shift provided plenty of its challenges what was often lost in the shuffle was the need to support our teachers, certainly mentally and emotionally, but also to help our students be successful at remote learning. Educators were first tasked to learn how to deliver curriculum in a way that was mostly just a faraway thought for another day in many discussions and meetings.

So, the question became, “How do we teach our teachers how to teach remotely?” As much as I wish I could claim credit for pioneering the idea of cohorting and micro-PD a quick Google search will reveal that the idea has been floating out there for quite some time as an attempt to change professional development for the better but seemed to explode on to the scene when the stakes were at their highest amid the pandemic. I have two dedicated Edtech Coaches on my team who were chomping at the bit to use our new freedom to simply, “make it work” some of these concepts in our district. Every district now needed a Learning Management System (LMS) and though many of us had dabbled in tools like Google Classroom, the need for a far more robust and powerful tool was all but required. This was just the tip of the iceberg as most LMS’ allow for connections and bolt-on accessories to deliver content, provided differentiation, make the curriculum more accessible, and easily connect with students near and far. Every Edtech company and vendor was saturating email inboxes with catchy phrases, gifs, and videos on how their tool would make everything work with the click of a button. Alas, this is never the case and whichever direction you took would require some type of training and education to be successful.

There we were with a powerful LMS, 1:1 student devices, teachers taking as much equipment as they could manage to stuff their home offices with and the biggest missing piece was how we can train them to use these things from a distance. We needed teachers to know how to use the LMS inside and out so partnering with our curriculum team we developed badges and levels of competency that a staff stakeholder group agreed would move the needle in effective usage and helpful training. Our Edtech team led the way in learning our LMS and then created a course that contained all the badging info and resources to train teachers on how to use what they had and earn the leveled badges which our district tied to financial incentives to honor the time spent. Then they offered to lead various cohorts throughout the year to coach groups of teachers through the course and be all but guaranteed to earn all the badges offered and apply that knowledge directly to their courses. Seems painfully simple on paper, but the number of hours needed, and new thinking accepted to fully embrace these methods is no easy task.

Now that we have embraced these models, I don’t see us ever going back. The positive feedback from our staff regarding the ability to gain new knowledge and apply it to their teaching has been overwhelming. We have evolved at a rapid rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that includes how we do professional development. Take this as your cue to evolve yourselves and your organization and make life-long learning attainable and enjoyable!