Professional development plan
The Gloversville Enlarged School District will use primarily Title IIA funds to make effective staff development activities available to all teachers, administrators and other staff over the next three years. Every effort will be made to make the same software available to all schools in the district, based on applicability. Fiscal resources will be used to acquire technology that is necessary to maintain a high quality system that will be used to help all students to achieve the learning standards. The District will support the continuation of Digital Learning Specialists in each district building. This person is a teacher who works on a daily basis with fellow teachers to integrate technology into daily lessons.
Professional development activities have included instruction in the use of Internet resources such as Google Drive and Google Classroom and other purchased software packages (School Tool, StaffTrac, Bright Bytes Early Warning and Survey, Frontline).
Teachers have and will continue to participate in workshops that enable them to make their own websites and to develop their own teaching materials through the use of PowerPoint, Google Present and YouTube video streaming. Training has helped teachers to learn to use new hardware resources such as projection devices, interactive graphical interface devices, digital photography, Ipads, Laptops and Copier/scanners.
The district will continue a model for professional development in which teachers are given paid time to search for appropriate technology resources and to then develop actual lessons that effectively address learning standards in mathematics and ELA, with a particular emphasis on finding resources for students with disabilities.
Between 2018 and 2021, the District will continue to provided faculty with intensive, high quality and sustainable professional development in the Google apps for Education Platform for the District’s 1:1 Chromebook program for grades 2-12. The professional development is targeted for educators in the middle and high school and then elementary.
The project objectives are:
- To provide K-12 teachers, librarians and administrators with meaningful professional develop in the Google apps for education platform.
- To increase the percentage of Gloversville educators utilizing Google apps for education into standards-aligned curricula. Instruction will focus heavily on how to leverage the collaborative power of the platform to enhance students’ learning experiences.
Teachers will be instructed in how to review student works-in-progress, leave comments and insert links and relevant texts. They will be shown how students can act as peer editors for their classmates as well as collaborators in writing on a single group project using their Chromebooks. The tools will be equally important to solve complex problems in math, science, technology and engineering in support of mathematics, Science and technology standards.
How will the instructional technology goals be measured and evaluated during and after implementation?
We will use our Bright Bytes Survey software to access our continued success providing a safe, robust computing and communications environment.
The technology will be visible and in use. Bright Bytes will also assist in the evaluation process.