1:1 - Professional Development Planning to Come...

The pitch has been made for a 1:1 initiative starting in 6th Grade. So now, the tough part of "how do we pay for this?" Thankfully, that's not what I have to figure out. Once that gets figured out (multi-million dollar project in the middle of a recession - no big deal...) we have a ton of work ahead of us. There is so much out there that has been shared about 1:1 initiatives. Not the least of which has been on Dangerously Irrelevant of late with two wonderful guest posts on how they've done this.

In our planning to plan I'm taking to heart a short post from Scott McLeod last week New technologies vs new behaviors

Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviors.

- Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, p. 160

I visit many schools that have 'new technologies,' but not enough of them also have 'new behaviors.' It's time for us educators to raise our game (leaders, I'm pointing to you first).

We need so badly to knock the professional development out of the park to change behaviors. If we don't do that, little else matters.Mostly labs are used for text, Compass Odyssey Learning or NWEA Testing. To be fair, most of the teachers probably have no idea what their lessons/units/classes need to look like to truly take advantage of what a 1:1 program can do for engaging learners. We need to have a clear plan of how instruction will change from teacher-centered to student-centered. That's going to be a tough process for some, but a necessary one in order for our district to serve our students well and meet future competition.

While this is nothing new to the blogosphere, I don't think anyone in this position can underestimate how important it is to get the professional development right. So much time, money and planning go into getting all our boxes and wires in line, on time - ready to ship as Seth Godin would say. We're lucky to have leaders in our Student and Instructional Services Department who know the importance of the professional development and have that baked into the plan. I had hoped for 40 hours of development, I think we're going to end up with 24. Not perfect, but a good spot to start.

After those initial 24 hours we need to make sure to follow up with teachers, grade level teams and departments to help make further development job-embedded. It's no small secret that one-shot PD leads to dying initiatives. Hopefully PLC initiatives will help make this go. It just goes to show how the right changes can help across other initiatives. After PLCs we need to focus on Social Learning and Personal Learning Networks through Twitter and other social media outlets. I think that's years down the line for complete implementation, but hopefully much sooner for those staff members who are ready for it.

I'm looking forward to all the hard work that goes with this, because this truly is why we do what we do!