How to have more meaningful iPad professional development

While the nuts and bolts of the iPad can be quickly learned, understanding the educational potential of various apps and web tools takes considerably more time. What educators truly need is a sustained professional development environment in which they can explore and study strategies for empowering every student with a portable, internet-connected multimedia device. This requires a great deal of thinking about curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher collaboration practices.

For inspiration, The Park Tudor School in Indianapolis has created an engaging video on “Learning and Creating with iPads in Kindergarten” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5b6y7DJuYk, in which students use iPads to explore and present the world of butterflies. It outlines an admirable inquiry-based, student-centric, and collaborative approach to iPad integration. Administrators need to focus on helping educators create similar innovative instructional environments more than they need to provide operational workshops.

While many schools provide one day of professional development at the beginning of the year, the reality is that meaningful professional development must be ongoing throughout the year. At EdTechTeacher, we provide a blended instructional model, which includes on-site workshops, online courses, live webinars, and just-in-time support. We also bring our experience of working with schools across the country and sharing their practices and approaches. However, we’re fully aware that there are other effective professional learning models. One of the most popular forms of participant–driven professional development in recent years has been the Edcamp model, which allows participants to lead and select sessions based on their particular needs and interests.

Whether professional development is externally or internally driven, faculty must be given the opportunity to collaborate with their peers—in close proximity and online—as this is the best pathway to lasting change. These interactions not only lead to comfort, confidence, and creativity among educators; they model the lifelong learning attributes we’re trying to foster in our students.

Effective professional development can take many forms, but it requires less of a focus on the “nuts and bolts” of technology, and more on the pedagogy of using it. This process takes time, not a few short hours or days, and should be a continuous investment throughout the year. The key is facilitating communication and collaboration among educators and exposing them to successful practices. If we help teachers interact and share, both on-site and online, we can help them grow professionally.

Tom Daccord is the director of EdTechTeacher, a leading professional learning organization.

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