Professional Learning Matrix

Introduction/Overview

East Central's Independent School District (ISD) has more than 1,000 professional staff members who service 12 campuses district-wide. The Professional Learning Matrix (PLM) was devised to provide staff members with a recommended path for professional, and para-educator, development. The PLM provides a progression of courses based on core content subject areas, creating a natural flow of staff development opportunities designed to enrich classroom teaching and learning.

Through the program, East Central ISD strives to accomplish the following goals:

• Focus on research-based instructional strategies aligned with federal, state, and local standards
• Support the learning needs of all district employees for Instructional Practices and Technology Integration
• Support teacher and staff learning needs as identified in the teacher evaluation process
• Target all professional development to improve classroom instruction and student learning
• Support and encourage teacher collaboration
• Provide means for educators to observe and reflect upon instructional strategies and implementation plans
• Integrate Technology competencies into the core content areas to meet the SBEC requirements for technology applications
• Provide new technology users with building skills to enhance instruction
• Provide enrichment skills and instructional strategies for experienced technology users
• Provide guidance in campus improvement planning for staff development

The key elements of the program include:

• An intensive professional development program tailored to meet individual educator needs
• Professional development opportunities tailored to core content areas to enhance technology applications integration into the classroom
• Educator collaboration
• Alignment with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation
• Alignment with State Board of Educator Certification (SBEC) continuing education requirements
• Alignment with current district and campus improvement plan

Organizational Change

Technology integration and use followed a shotgun approach. Teachers and administrators could sign up for a wide variety of courses but were not sure how they fit into the big plan of moving them forward. As such, there was recognition from stakeholders that a more strategic plan was necessary. The impact of having the PLM in place will be to minimize taking courses just to take them, and instead aligned everyone’s expectations to spend time and effort on those sessions that move them forward toward achieving NCLB technology literacy.

Professional Development

PLM will be made available to all district employees by Spring, 2015. The professional development courses outlined in the PLM will be made available—and correlated to workshops—through the District's learning management system. Two systems the District is currently using include the free, open source system, Moodle, and SafeSchools.com (proposed).

ECISD Technology Department

Recommended Progression of Professional Learning Opportunities

Professional Learning Matrix (PLM)

Program Information | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Evaluation |

Program Information

The East Central ISD's Professional Learning Matrix (PLM) serves as a framework for professional development to meet the needs of teachers in the district in order to document that teachers have the knowledge and skills necessary to integrate technology into effective instruction in every classroom. This performance-based program is based on and correlated with state and national standards, including:

1. International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
2. Texas' State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) and Technology Application TEKS
3. No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB)
4. Levels of Technology Implementation (LOTI)
5. Texas STaR Chart

The PLM is composed of online courses as well as electronic tutorials and should serve as a guide to those participating in Professional Development.

Program Goals

• Focus on research based instructional strategies aligned with Federal, State and Local standards
• Support the learning needs of all District Employees for Instructional Practices and Technology Integration
• Support teacher and staff learning needs as identified in the teacher evaluation process
• Target all professional development to improve classroom instruction and student learning
• Support and encourage teacher collaboration
• Provide means for educators to observe and reflect upon instructional strategies and implementation plans
• Integration of Instructional Technology into the core content areas to meet the SBEC requirements for Technology Applications
• Provide new technology users with building skills to enhance instruction
• Provide enrichment skills and instructional strategies for experienced technology users
• Provide guidance in Campus Improvement Planning for staff development

Program Components

Outcomes

In the short term, East Central ISD strives to provide teachers with the needed skills to begin utilizing technology within their classrooms for administrative tasks and to slowly build upon those tasks over time to fully integrate the use of technology into all subject areas and in all lessons.

Through the use of technology in the classroom, teachers are able to provide students with authentic learning opportunities that could otherwise be limited due to traditional resources. The advent of technology provides an increased learning tool for students to utilize in conjunction with traditional resources. The PLM has been structured to provide teachers with the knowledge and learning tools necessary to be able to seamlessly provide technology-integrated resources in the classroom.

The PLM consists of 4 stages that addresses all of the performance indicators of the SBEC Technology Applications Standards I-V, as well as different levels of LoTi.

*Certification Route 1 includes some assessment portions throughout the program, to include but not limited to model teachers, lesson plan creation, and portfolio creation.