Key Elements of Staff Development

What makes a successful Professional Staff Development program? These souces outline the best practices in use across the professional development community.

•Critical Issue: Providing Professional Development for Effective Technology Use by Ginger Rodriguez, NCREL. Rodriquez and colleagues present innovative methods for delivering technology based training to teachers. Several practicing educators share their expertise as well.

•Delivering Relevant Staff Developmentby Lorie Jackson, "In an ideal world, teachers arrive at staff training sessions well rested, eager to learn, with easy access to the resources they'll need to implement what they learn. Of course, schools are rarely ideal places. So, how do you, a K-12 in-service staff developer or administrator, provide relevant staff development in the real world? Teacher training expert Lorrie Jackson offers advice on how you can make your training sessions both relevant and effective."-Education World

•Designing Staff Development for the Information Age by Jamie McKenzie, staffdevelop.org. McKenzie brings hope to planners by outlining what we know works in Ed Tech staff development.

Teaching Adult Learners

Most of us spend our lives teaching kids. When we plan staff development activities, we need to remember that we are dealing with adults and that they often learn in ways different than our everyday students. The following resources help planners adapt to the differences.

•How Teachers Learn Best by Jamie McKenzie. The author stresses that "after two decades of providing software classes to teachers, we need to explore different approaches — those honoring key principles of adult learning while placing both curriculum and literacy ahead of software and technology."

•Excerpt about Adult Learning from International Society for Technology in Education's "Administrative Solutions Guide for Handheld Technology in Schools". Authors David Pownell and Gerald D. Bailey discuss that teachers not only need technical skill instruction, but significant help understanding how to implement the technology into the classroom.

•Learning Strategies by Jackie Dobrolvny. The author explores the ways that adult learners can use metacognition to enhance their learning. When participants understand how they best learn, they can better absorb the information.

Creating a Needs Assessment

Before you can begin to plan your staff development activities, you must first determine your organization and learners' needs.

The following articles provide expert advice about doing just that.

•Today's needs assessment must be customized, informal, and repetitive by Robby Champion, The author advises staff development designers to tailor instruction as much as possible to learner needs.

•NEEDS ASSESSMENT, The first step by Robert H. Rouda and Mitchell E. Kusy Jr. Keeping things relevant to what learners need is the backbone of any effective program.

• Determining your Staff Development Needs from the National Center for Education Statistics. This article provides the who, when , where, and why to questions about setting up an effective needs assessment.

Funding Professional Development

School districts are learning that to avoid what Jamie McKenzie calls "Screen Saver Disease", new technology sitting unused, they must invest significant amounts of resources into teaching teachers how to integrate it.

The National Center for Staff Development has created a set of standards that discuss what percentage of technology funding should go to staff development: NCSD: About Standards:Resources

The federal No Child Left Behind Act provides varied levels of technology staff development through Title IID. Several states offer online help for understanding this portion of NCLB. United States Dept. of Education's Directory

The National Educational Technology Plan was developed by the State Educational Technology Direcotrs Association. Their website outlines standards and helps states work together to find ways to fund their NCLB mandates.