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Digital Promise, Verizon Open Up Free Remote Teacher Training Pathways

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 12/08/20

Digital Promise and Verizon have teamed up to offer free training pathways for individual teachers, which can earn educators microcredentials. There are three pathways currently being promoted, with more to be offered in the next year:

• Transitioning to remote learning, to learn how to shift pedagogy to a remote format, which is aligned with five microcredentials;

• Evergreen tools for blended and remote learning, to explore tools for "creating online classroom spaces and meaningful blended and remote learning experiences," which can lead to a single microcredential; and

• Introduction to instructional technology coaching, to help build coaching skills that lead to improved teaching and learning with instructional technology, which doesn't have its own credential but can serve as a "supplemental resource" to existing coaching models.

Teachers can go through the programs via standalone instruction with webinars and learning modules or with sequenced learning courses that are available in real-time or on-demand.

When the training is over, Digital Promise's microcredentials program provides competency-based certification through assessment by experts; and teachers receive a certificate of attendance.

The program is part of Verizon's Innovative Learning project, which has delivered teacher training to 14,311 teachers in 264 schools, in a structure that has involved entire schools. Now, the two organizations are making the training available to individual educators.

"To be clear, technology in and of itself won't change anything, but the absence of access to it can change everything," wrote Lydia Logan, executive director of the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools initiative at Digital Promise, in a blog about the new program. "Every child should have the opportunity to attend a school where a strong instructional leader with a clear vision for school transformation who supports teachers and learners creates a culture of powerful learning where gaps can narrow and opportunities expand. This should be the new normal."

Sign-up is available through the Digital Promise website.