November 2013
Leveraging technology in professional learning
By Anthony Armstrong
After recent budget cuts, Stephen is the only ELL specialist in his rural district. As the teachers in his district work on integrating literacy lessons across all topics, he is challenged to support them with the English language learners scattered throughout the grade levels. While he is a member of two school-based learning communities within the district, and he gains useful lessons from his subject-area peers, his most valuable learning this year has come from an online network of ELL specialists in other states and districts.
The specialists in his group meet monthly to discuss best practices, challenges, skills, and new discoveries in the field, using a standards-based approach that focuses on student achievement.
Facilitators make a concerted effort to create a safe space for participants to share their problems of practice, discover possible solutions, and learn about themselves and their field. Stephen shares his concerns and gets feedback and advice from other ELL specialists with varying levels of experience across the country. Members regularly report back on their results for the group to reflect on, and the conversations are automatically recorded in the online community\'s archives to support ongoing and future discussions.
This collaborative dialogue helps Stephen learn new techniques to integrate ELL strategies into literacy lessons across topics. He has also learned how to build online professional learning modules so he can share those techniques with teachers in his district. This aligns his use of technology with his district and school\'s Common Core implementation goals while giving his teachers better access to his support and resources.
Current reforms in education, such as implementing Common Core standards and building new assessment and accountability systems, are increasing the need for highly effective professional learning. This follows several years of reduced budgets and reallocated resources, turning many professional development practitioners into creative accountants as they help schools and school systems find the money, time, and people to meet their growing professional learning needs.
Within this heavily burdened environment for professional learning, recent advancements in technology offer promises of improved results, often using fewer resources. For example, always-on resources improve access for learners who can engage with their learning 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Remote access to learning increases equity across systems that may not have been able to share resources before and provides connections among educators who share needs. Data capture and analysis systems provide a faster and more accurate picture of learning needs, improving the personalization of learning. At the same time, these data systems automate a great deal of the work, reducing the amount of time and money required. Technology-enhanced learning designs can improve engagement with research-based models that improve learning results. On a macro level, incorporating technology into a system of professional learning requires alignment of goals on the individual, team, and system levels, helping ensure coherence in the learning.
The promise of technology
Technology has the capability to
- Improve access to learning;
- Increase equity;
- Improve learning results;
- Reduce time and money spent on professional learning; and
- Ensure coherence in vision and goals.
However, education leaders must carefully select, plan, implement, and assess the technology\'s use, support, and ongoing review to fulfill this promise.
However, these benefits cannot be completely realized if the technology is expected to stand on its own. To fully experience its contributions to learning, educators must deliberately integrate it into a comprehensive professional learning system that is aligned to the Standards for Professional Learning.
Within a comprehensive professional learning system
For any professional learning to be effective, educators cannot pursue it as a stand-alone activity. Collaborative team meetings, job-embedded observations and coaching, and lesson studies, which can be helpful on their own, only reach their full potential when schools and systems integrate them within a comprehensive system of high-quality professional learning that is aligned to the Standards for Professional Learning and implemented within an ongoing cycle of continuous improvement.
What does this mean for integrating new technologies into professional learning? It means that, as with an outside expert giving a series of workshops, technology does not offer a one-size-fits-all solution. There is danger in the temptation to think of technology as something that can be bought, installed, and left to work its problem-solving magic. To borrow a phrase from a famous infomercial, one does not simply \"set it and forget it\" when using technology in professional learning.
For example, if a school system purchased an online course management system for its educators, important considerations would be determining how the system interacts with student and educator performance data and if the tool facilitates that interaction; how using the technology supports current school and district goals; and what metrics are there to measure the success of the technology, both online and offline. Once educators address these issues, they will need to monitor, measure, and revise the use of the tool to ensure that its use continues to move participants towards the established goals.
In alignment with the Standards for Professional Learning
The Standards for Professional Learning are a set of elements that work together to create professional learning that leads to improved teacher and leader practices and student results. If technology-enhanced learning is truly going to support a comprehensive effective learning system, it must also align to the same set of standards.
The Standards for Professional Learning offer guidance for considering how well a technology resource aligns or supports their implementation. For example, when considering how well a tool might improve learning designs, an educator can ask how it applies current learning theories, research, and models; how well it differentiates to accommodate learner preferences, backgrounds, experiences, skills, and needs; how it increases users\' active engagement; or how it builds flexibility into learning pathways and processes.
The use of some technologies may seem to contribute directly to the standards, but educators must examine options carefully to ensure full alignment. For example, an online collaborative network may seem to support the Learning Communities standard. However, the Learning Communities standard specifies that the goals of the learning community align with school and district priorities. Stakeholders should ask if the online community advances an individual or team\'s work toward those priorities.
Within a cycle of continuous improvement
Using technology effectively requires intentional planning, implementation, and then monitoring and revisions for ongoing improvement. Before educators adopt any technology, they must first determine student learning needs, corresponding teacher needs, how the technology resource can help meet those needs, and what type of ongoing support will be available for learning and implementing the new technology. Educators must establish clear and deliberate goals from the start so that all parties understand team, school, or system purposes and expectations for the technology-enhanced learning and the staff using it. At the same time, a strategy for implementing the technology resource needs to incorporate research from change processes and provide the ongoing resources and support needed for effective implementation. Finally, as with any cycle of continuous improvement, educators must plan ongoing monitoring of the results so that they continue to make updates and adjustments to ensure success.
For an in-depth guide to analyzing how well a product or service aligns to all of the Standards for Professional Learning, and to get detailed instructions for planning, supporting, and monitoring technology, download Learning Forward\'s Meet the promise of content standards: Tapping technology to enhance professional learning.
Ultimately, using technology for professional learning offers the possibility of improving current processes, stretching resources, expanding the learning environment, and improving learning designs and results. Thanks to recent advances in learning and technology, new possibilities for improved learning now exist that were not available before. However, technology may be an empty promise unless education leaders carefully select, plan, implement, and assess its use, support, and ongoing review.