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Ongoing professional development supports effective teacher use of technology through the use of instructional technology coaches, teams of teacher leaders, or other systems of support.
All guiding questions are aligned to the element criteria located in the Portfolio Guide.
Our student tech team is set up as a class that meets every other day during 3rd period. They develop content for our school website and social media, offer teacher and students workshops and help teachers and students to solve technical problems.
We have been implementing technology on a daily basis since 2017, approximately 50% of our teachers use the devices daily on their classes.
Our observations told us we need to keep working on professional development and teacher support to move our teachers' device use from the early stage such us Entry and Adoption to Adaptation, Infusion and Transformation.
My goal is to reach a teacher everyday to talk about his/her experiences and needs.
The pandemic brought us another problem, half of our students have their own devices, therefore, the lesson plan and implementation is more difficult and teachers need a lot of technical support.
Our coaches for reading and math are collaborating throughout peer observation
This year Mater Academy focussed on Blended Learning as our theme for three professional development sessions led by Erin West through Zoom. Our teacher engaged with Erin In break-out rooms, zoom chat, padlet, and much more!
After the zoom session, our teachers also engaged In self-paced modules that reinforced our live session.
We are thankful for these opportunities to learn from our Digital Promise Team and each other.
This year, Mater Academy migrated to a new professional development system using our platform Colegia-PD.
Our platform allowed us to offer in excess of 83 hours of professional development in a variety of topics for our teachers and administrators.
37 hours of PD were directly related to technology and the integration of devices in classrooms
Each Year Mater Academy Teachers are asked to complete a survey regarding their Professional Development wants and needs -the survey is currently live with 57 Responses so far! https://forms.gle/ABGAa9t4mhABz45S9