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“Success will be judged not by how many teachers and administrators participate in staff development programs or how they perceive its value, but by whether it alters instructional behavior in a way that benefits students.”
—Dennis Sparks and Stephanie Hirsh
A New Vision for Staff Development
If any professional development event can be legendary, it is Camp Apple. Many of us have Camp Apple stories. They usually involve a statement along the lines of “it changed everything” or “I owe everything to…” Our Camp Apple story is no different; it really did change everything.
Camp Apple was not a single event, but occurred over several years in the mid-1990s. It was a yearly staff development program designed to support Apple Computer’s education grants program. As part of their grant, teachers, principals, and professors from each team were required to participate in a multiday workshop that featured an immersive 24/7 technology-enriched environment. This transformative professional development experience was led by John Schiller from Sonoma County Office of Education, Don Zundel of Apple Computer, and Madalaine Pugliese from Simmons College in Massachusetts.
The staff development included a project-development process that guided participants as they developed strong technology skills and gained experience learning with technology. The process also provided a road map for project-building that educators could take back to their classrooms to use with students.
At these workshops we had the opportunity to meet and work with some of the most talented staff developers we have had the privilege to know. Late at night, we would sit in the dorm lounge and wonder how we could take the successes of this event in a “perfect world” and translate them to the real world of the schools and districts we worked with every day. Over the years, we have combined that project-building process with a project-design process, delivering staff development based on the tenets of project-based learning.
So much technology staff development is precisely that— technology staff development. Workshops focus on how a specific hardware, software, or online tool works and how to use its features, with the focus on the technology, not the learning process. In this model, an expert dispenses knowledge, and the learner attempts to follow the leader and repeat the process. How many conferences do we attend that perpetuate this model, where many of the featured speakers are talking about tips and tricks for software, or taking better pictures with a digital camera. At a recent conference, the most popular session I saw (with a line out the door and around the corner) was a hands-on workshop on advanced features in Final Cut Pro.
If we want to help educators integrate technology into their curricula and change their classroom model from the “sage on the stage” to the “guide on the side,” standing in the front of a workshop disseminating information while participants follow the leader to learn the technology is not appropriate modeling.
A project-based approach to technology staff development improves teaching, learning, and technology skills by modeling their effective implementation in the classroom. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, we need to “become the change we want to see.” We believe that a project-based learning environment not only fosters learning in the classroom, it also provides an effective model for staff development.
In the Classroom
Project-based learning (PBL)engages students in work that allows them to construct their own knowledge and develop authentic products while dealing with real-world issues. In this environment, the teacher guides students as they work to complete long-term, interdisciplinary projects that require content knowledge, creativity, innovation, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication skills.
In a PBL environment, technology is simply one tool students use to explore the content of their projects, collaborate with peers and experts to form opinions, gather and organize data, and communicate ideas and information. Asking students to engage the curriculum with relevant tools helps them feel connected to school. By bringing PBL concepts and technology together, educators can guide students to create real-world solutions using powerful open-ended tools.
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