Many kinds of professional development exist within and across schools, but the IMPACT Model School Grant has provided enough professional development dollars to allow some "best practice" modifications to two common models that have reputations for being less than effective: conference attendance and outside consultants.
Can't you just hear the call coming? "Let's take our statewide high-stakes pencil-and-paper testing system and use technology to automate it.
Technology is a tool that has the potential to empower educational leaders at all levels - whether they are superintendents, principals, teachers, board members or state officials - as well as to redefine what education means in the 21st century.
Data as defined here encompasses a range of topics, including data definitions, data management systems, infrastructure (both local and statewide), and the actual use of data to make decisions on either the administrative or instructional side.
The use of instructional technology has evolved over the last two decades.
Founded in the fall of 2001, the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) is an association that represents the state directors for education technology.
The ice is starting to retreat from the warmer parts of the Earth. Early man, a hunter, is beginning to make his way in the Stone Age.
It's just another day in middle school. Students file into class while others file out with their backpacks slung low.
Leadership is a difficult concept to define in education technology.
Last summer, a truck arrived at Freeport Middle School in Freeport, Maine, and unloaded more than 130 laptops - one for every seventh-grade teacher and student.
One thing we can consistently do in technology and education is call for more professional development.
During the last year, SETDA tackled the question, "How do you provide professional development to those who typically develop and/or provide the opportunities to others?"
When a state makes the decision to award a small number of high-dollar grants, the stakes are considerable.
In February, the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology published a comprehensive vision of its pathway to the future of education technology.