April 2003 — Features
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Technology for Charter Schools Too: A Team-Based Training Model
- Communication with teachers and school leaders was difficult during the summer months.
- Scheduling changes led to conflicts for some participants.
- E-mail communication was relied upon but not used by many of the participants, which led to more communication difficulties.
- Sustainability was not fully possible because of the short grant-project timeline.
Recommendations:
Coordinate early. This is perhaps the most obvious and frequently stressed recommendation for all large-scale education projects, but it cannot be emphasized enough. Many of the problems we encountered could have been avoided with more careful planning. Project managers need to spend time coordinating in advance, even if that means preparing for a grant that has not yet been awarded. Project participants should create loose timelines, goals and contingency plans in preparation for the award. Not only will you be ready when you win a grant, but you will also be prepared to solicit other funds if the award should fall through.
Provide follow-up training. The most frequent suggestion from the participants was to continue the training into their individual schools. In this grant, we were able to meet this request to some degree by adjusting the training flow to allow for some generalized on-site training, though the grant timeline restricted the effectiveness of this significantly. Given a choice, the participants would have preferred initial group training followed by ongoing localized training. This reinforces that one-time training events are not as effective as other on-site, long-term training.
Provide stipends. This grant was designed to occur over the summer and, because participation in training and evaluation activities was considered crucial to the success of the overall grant, all participants were paid a daily stipend. The stipends accounted for a good portion (16%) of the overall grant funding, but was well worth the cost. Any training initiative in schools should look to provide stipends to its participants. Enthusiasm for and perceived value of the training seemed higher as a result of the stipends paid.
Provide separate and combined training for teachers and administrators. This grant addressed the needs of administrators and teachers separately. Although linked by the underlying ISTE standards, the physical training occurred at separate times and locations. The original design of the grant was to allow for more interaction between the two groups, including a combined training day. However, delivery logistics didn't allow for this to occur. Although administrators and technology leaders were advised to attend both training strands where appropriate, the majority attended only the administrator strand.
During the administrator training, many participants suggested that their teachers would benefit from the discussions and expressed a desire for them to be present. Because of the variance in skills required to create a school environment supportive of integration and those required to integrate technology into curriculum, it is recommended that while the two groups remain separated, they also should be given some opportunity to interact. The feedback from the T4T training suggested that both groups could benefit from collaboration on such topics as professional development and building buy-in for technology efforts.
