Four leaders of successful community of practice (COP) education initiatives participated in a panel at FETC and shared their knowledge about and experience with best practices for online communities of education practitioners. This article is an excerpt of the discussion.
This report is targeted to education leaders and stakeholders who are interested in exploring, starting, or strengthening online communities of practice for educators.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the rationale for technology coaching, principles for coaching and ideas for planning and evaluating a coaching model.
This is a tool that aligns the progress that individuals (e.g. teacher, campus) make toward meeting state and district technology goals with the four key areas of the state’s Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006 – 2020.
This resource frames five outcomes of professional development that are typically of interest: participants’ (i.e. teachers’) reactions, participants’ learning, organization support and change, participants’ use of new knowledge and skills, and student learning outcomes.
SAMR offers a method of seeing how technology might impact teaching and learning through four key levels: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition.
TPACK is a framework that extends Lee Shulman’s idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge by identifying the knowledge teachers need to teach effectively with technology.
The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM system includes a variety of different data collection tools designed to inform decision-making and alignment of resources at the classroom, school, and district levels. Arizona has also adopted the TIM as a tool for their districts.
The efforts of InTASC have helped to describe the new vision of teaching needed for today’s learners and what strategies teachers can employ to improve their practice both individually and collectively. inTASC specifically addresses the need for teachers to be able to personalize instruction through digital learning and how teachers should develop expertise in applying technology to support learning (p23), integrate technology into their planning (p35) and participate in professional learning opportunities that support digital learning (p35).
