Our district already offers professional learning specific to content areas and instructional coaches, specialists and mentor teachers prove ongoing, just right and just in time support to teachers throughout the year. Our curriculum department also works diligently to ask teachers to experience tools and strategies from the view of the students and builds in a variety of engaging activities.  

          Let’s combine the great things we are already utilizing, add a few new pieces, and create blended professional learning courses. All the resources for a tool or strategy can then exist in one place for learners to look back upon as well as a platform to ask questions, discuss and learn with fellow collaborators. The online component will allow learners choice at the rate at which they move through content, move past pieces they are already comfortable with or revisit items they need help with. Face to face interactions are still utilized, but can be differentiated and targeted based on the needs of the teachers. Even with all the resources in place in an online course, face to face support could help an anxious teacher step into initial implementation of a new tool or strategy or help a different teacher move well beyond the basics into something more advanced. 

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          Before we can offer blended and online professional learning opportunities to teachers throughout the district, we need a pilot team from Learner Services to design and create them.  The Instructional Technology team has created a course on how to use our learning management system (LMS) in our LMS with lots of resources and examples.  We followed that up by creating a basic template course to help you get started, will schedule several open labs, and are available for one on one support.