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Think of the WORST professional development presentation or training you've been to.

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Think of the WORST professional development presentation or training you've been to.

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Choose three words to describe this presentation.

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What was the primary way this presenter got their information to you?

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What was the primary way this presenter got their information to you?

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Was it a slideshow? 25-minute video? Did they just straight-up talk for an hour?

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Now, think of the BEST professional development presentation you've been to.

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Now, think of the BEST professional development presentation you've been to.

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What are the three words you'd use to describe this presentation?

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What was the primary way they presented their information or training?

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What was the primary way they presented their information or training?

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Now that we know the good and bad aspects of professional development training, it's time to think about training in a new light.

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Now that we know the good and bad aspects of professional development training, it's time to think about training in a new light.

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This article from KQED's MindShift blog talks about the teacher-train-teachers model. Do you think this is an effective way to help teachers learn more about the technology their districts use?

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"Heather explained that in our position, we're not always the experts on everything, sometimes we're a sounding board or just someone to have a conversation with to feel better," Coons said. She has learned coaching is much more than being ready with a resource or tool; really good coaches actively listen, ask probing questions, and help teachers arrive at ideas independently so they have ownership over their growth. In that way it's a lot like great classroom teaching.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD COACH?
Digital Promise and EdTechTeam partnered to design the DLP program based on research about coaching and the experiences of veteran coaches who've learned how to be effective by doing it. There's a gap in the research about coaching for technology integration that Digital Promise is hoping to fill.

"We need to get much more explicit and clear about how we talk about the power of technology in learning," said Karen Cator, president and CEO of Digital Promise. She's frustrated that studies that look at aggregated test scores are used as proof of whether teachers and students should be using technology to learn. In her mind, it's an incontrovertible fact that access to knowledge on the internet and to powerful tech-tools have changed everything about what school can and should be. Now, leaders need to do more to make sure teachers can use those assets effectively.

Digital Promise researchers regularly surveyed principals, teachers, coaches, mentors, and students involved in the first year of the project. From their responses they identified five qualities of effective coaches.

A coach is good at building relationships. "For a teacher to welcome a coach into their classroom there has to be trust," Cator said.

Great coaches are often insiders. This is related to building relationships because someone who comes from inside the school knows its culture, their colleagues, and the students more intimately than someone coming from the outside. They can gain trust faster and make an impact on teaching and learning more quickly.

Coaches must be strong communicators. "This is all about communication, so you have to have someone who can give feedback to the teachers in helpful ways," Cator said. But communication doesn't stop there. The coach also needs to be able to communicate effectively with the principal, parents, and district folks. The coach is a connector between these stakeholders.

A coach believes in the power of technology. "The person didn't have to be technically awesome, but they needed to believe in the power of technology for transforming teaching and learning," Cator said.

A coach is an experienced teacher. When the coach has enough classroom experience to give advice and personal experience about a variety of classroom situations, they are much more effective. Someone who is in their first few years of teaching doesn't yet have the credibility with other colleagues to be the most effective coach, no matter how eager they are about technology and learning.

The surveys Digital Promise has conducted of participants at all levels (principals, teachers and coaches) show that this model has potential to help school continuously improve. A report on the project's first year, "Fostering Powerful Uses of Technology through Instructional Coaching," notes:

"Our data shows that after one year of working with their DLP coach, teachers are using technology more frequently and in more powerful ways. DLP teachers report significant increases in using technology for both teaching content and pedagogy-in other words, teachers are using technology to support what they are teaching, as well as how they are teaching it. At the end of the year, more than 80 percent of DLP teachers agreed that they have the ability to use technology in powerful ways when it comes to student collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking, agency, and that students are better at selecting appropriate technology tools."

ROLE OF MENTORS
A unique aspect of DLP is the support in-school technology coaches receive from mentors. Mentors are former teachers and coaches themselves, who often fumbled their way towards coaching over many years.

"When I first went one-to-one in 2010 with iPads, I was the only teacher in my building who had devices, I had no coach, and I spent the first three months crying," said Jennie Magiera on a panel about DLP at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. "And my instruction became worse for a little while because I was struggling so much."

That's what DLP is trying to avoid for the next generation of coaches and teachers. Schools have already invested in the technology, now they need to invest in coaching for teachers to make this fairly profound shift in practice. But coaching can be a lonely job -- that person often has no one else in their building doing similar work. That's where the mentor comes in. Mentors are a resource for coaches, so they continue their own professional growth too.

"I think the coaches we are working with are coaching at a higher level faster than coaches who don't have the support," said Heather Dowd, a DLP mentor working with coaches in South Carolina and Texas.

Dowd describes coaching as a continuum between being what she calls a "consultant" and being a true coach. At the consultant end of the spectrum, the coach is often providing resources, giving tool suggestions, helping teachers implement a lesson using the tool, and reflecting with them on how it went. Many people feel more comfortable in the consultant role, Dowd says, because they feel useful. "The challenge comes in if you never transition to becoming a coach and helping them do some of it for themselves," Dowd said.

True coaching, like great teaching, is about helping the adult learner see the solution on their own. Dowd says she's always pushing the coaches she mentors to "pause, paraphrase, and ask questions." When a teacher brings up a challenge, rather than jumping in with a potential solution or tool, listening and asking probing questions can help the teacher come to a solution on their own.

And since mentors are working with coaches at upwards of thirty schools across a region, they can play a connector role, sharing ideas between coaches in very different contexts. The DLP coaches meet regularly with their mentor online, but also participate in Google Hangouts with other coaches. It's a community of support and idea sharing that makes the job less lonely and helps everyone improve. Some coaches in a region have even started visiting one another's schools and meeting up in person.

Reflection is another key piece of this program. Coaches ask teachers to reflect on what worked and what didn't, tracking progress on coaching dashboard developed specifically for DLP. But coaches also submit weekly reflections to their mentors, who give them feedback and comments.

"They are making bigger changes in their schools, bigger changes in terms of the meaningful use of technology -- not just using it -- faster than what I saw happen my first couple years as a coach," Dowd said.
WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE DYNAMIC LEARNING PROJECT?
"So we have made the case for how and why coaching can be a powerful means for continuous improvement," Cator said. "Now we want to figure out how to systematize the most important parts of it and scale it up."

In its second year, DLP is working with 101 schools, up from the initial 50 in the first year. Participating schools have to pay the salaries of their coaches, but DLP pays for the mentor's time and a summer institute for all coaches -- basically a deep dive into coaching technology integration.

While that's still a relatively small footprint considering the size of the public education system, Digital Promise is packaging materials that could help other coaches and synthesizing the important elements of a strong coaching program so other schools can simulate the model. And, while a coach may only work with 10 teachers at a time in one cycle, they go through four cycles a year. Meanwhile, teachers are sharing their winds in staff meetings and with their departments, creating a culture of experimentation and building momentum for those who are more wary.

"One of the themes that came out from all of the coaches was that some of the teachers from last year who were more on that resistant side came back this year and are doing really fantastic things," Dowd said. "Our speculation is that it was one year of hearing about it and celebrating about it."

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Coaching Teachers To Become Powerful Users of Classroom Tech | KQED

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Many schools now have access to technology, but teachers are still unsure how to integrate it into their teaching in powerful ways. A technology coach could be a powerful way to help them make the transition.

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What are a few edtech tools you've used in the classroom?
Have you taught your peers how to use them?
Is it similar or different to how you approach teaching your students how to use new technology they might not have encountered yet?

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Remember that lesson or unit you were supposed to choose as part of your pre-work? Now's the time to use it.

In your group, teach an abbreviated version of your lesson, focusing on the technology rather than the content.

When you're done, one member of your group should be able to give a brief 1-sentence description of the tech tool, with a link to its website or app store page. Do this below.

Once everyone's done, upvote the tools you've used too, and downvote the ones you tried but didn't like using.