June 2005 — Features

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Logging on to Staff Development

By Gloria Bush, Mobile County Public School System

The district’s EETT grant proposal was based on benchmarks located in the district’s technology plan. Those benchmarks were based on the goals cited in the state’s IMPACT (Indicators for Measuring Progress in Advancing Classroom Technology) plan, which has six main goals:

  1. Encourage learning that is relevant and authentic through the use of technology.

  2. Align technology with local, state, and national content standards and curricula to enhance learning and enrich teaching.

  3. Provide professional development that enables staff to become and remain proficient in the use of technology to improve learning.

  4. Cultivate lifelong learning communities in which the tools of technology support knowledge.

  5. Give every learner the technological tools to access and process information.

  6. Fund Technical support, maintenance, and emerging technologies to improve learning. the technological tools to access and process information.

While the benchmarks in Mobile County’s technology plan focus mainly on the first four goals, some do cover the remaining two goals. In addition, the goal of technology literacy for all students is ech'ed in the Alabama Course of Study: Technology Education, which cites K-12 state standards and mandates that technology be integrated into content curriculum.

Online Staff Development

Complying with these state mandates— and ensuring that Mobile County teachers are proficient in using and teaching technology— means that the district not only needs educators skilled in the use of technology for learning, but also has to provide consistent access to professional development that supports the use of technology in teaching and learning. Mobile County is also required to have sufficient personnel to provide technical assistance in maintaining and using the technology (Alabama IMPACT–Phase II: Alabama Technology Plan for K-12 Education, Alabama Department of Education, 2002).

To meet these provisions, Mobile County’s technology division has three main departments. The Management Information System (MIS) department offers services from programming to central office support. Its Microcomputer Services (MCS) department provides services such as networking, hardware repair, and software training to district schools and support staff. Finally, the Instructional Technology department, which is in the same location as MCS, supports teachers and administrators in using technology in the classroom.

This technology division keeps in contact with schools to ensure that teachers are aware of these resources and internal training. However, because the district has about 4,000 teachers with widely dispersed locations and availability, the technology division decided that making an online computer training course available would provide the uniformity needed to achieve the state’s directive. An added benefit was that online staff development would allow participants to take advantage of self-paced study that was available anytime, anywhere.