Faculty PD

Another important component in moving our faculty forward has been providing a comprehensive faculty professional development program, designed to keep a conversation going around how technology can be used to enhance teaching and learning. (click here to see our Teacher Talk video series) Our technology integrations coordinator and tech integration folk in our Lower and Middle Schools spend their days having conversations with faculty about this and our one-off technology training events are designed to build upon this concept.

We’ll schedule faculty presentations during a series of full faculty meetings that will hit the same topic from multiple angles. For example, we might have faculty from different grades across divisions talk about what redundant resources look like for them. To add to the conversation, we’ll sometimes ask students to present. Our faculty have been amazed by the ease with which students use technological tools saying that we, the faculty, are holdouts and we need to catch up.

In January, we have a school wide mini tech conference with the majority of presenters being Columbus Academy faculty, including all those faculty receiving Milt Tayor Grants. In the months following our tech conference, those presenters then become resource agents that other faculty can lean on as they move forward.

Click here to view the 2014 Tech Fair Keynote Address.

The picture below shows Upper School faculty during an optional two-day professional development event that occurred in the summer. To give you an idea about where faculty are in regards to Vision 2015, of forty-five Upper School faculty, forty-three attended this event. The two who did not attend had previously scheduled vacations but chose to catch up later that summer. The focus of this training was mobile and online learning. On day one, our 7th and 8th grade faculty talked about the Middle School students’ Mobile Learning experiences that they would be bringing with them into Upper School. On day two, we partnered with OSU’s Digital First program to talk about what students' online and mobile learning experiences would be upon graduating from Columbus Academy.

In addition to sharing our own successes, we also send faculty out to see how other schools are using technology to enhance teaching and learning.