July 2007 — Case Studies
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Professional Development :: Oregon
THE OREGON ED TECH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CADRE: A STATEWIDE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY
In Oregon, professional development experts built a team to foster networking among educators about ed tech.
“The Oregon Professional Development Cadre has been instrumental in supporting my own personal growth—providing time and opportunity to collaborate with colleagues around the state, share innovations, and learn effective strategies for improving student achievement.”—Todd Hamilton, Instructional Technology Specialist/Professional Developer, Eugene School District 4J
The Oregon Ed Tech Professional Development Cadre (pdc.oetc.org) evolved from a meeting five years ago to introduce professional development providers from Oregon’s math, science, English, and social science professional organizations to interactive web resources. As the group shared success stories about how they were integrating technology into instruction and compared favorite web resources, it became clear that a new professional learning community was emerging.
The Oregon Department of Education and the Organization for Educational Technology and Curriculum (OETC), an organization that provides low-cost purchasing options, professional development, and influence in the integration of technology into education for five states in the Northwest (OR, WA, AK, ID, and MT), decided that this opportunity for ongoing, sustained professional development was too powerful to pass up. Thus the Oregon Ed Tech Professional Development Cadre was born.
The goal of the cadre is to identify and disseminate best practices targeting technology integration into teaching and learning, by:
- providing a forum for networking and collaborative work
- focusing on exemplary staff development skills
- modeling effective instructional strategies
- demonstrating applications of emerging technologies
During the 2006-2007 school year, the cadre expanded from 40 to 85 members; most of the members are administrators, curriculum directors, technology specialists, or teachers. The cadre’s meetings have been conducted by three strands: Emerging Technologies, Technology Integration, and Effective Professional Development Strategies. Emerging Technologies focused on Web 2.0 tools for the classroom, introducing tools such as Furl (File Uniform Resource Locators), blogs, video blogs, Spresent, Gickr, Trailfire, wikis, and all things Google. Technology Integration focused on the effective use of spreadsheets, collaborative communication, and collaborative mapping tools for concept development. Effective Professional Development Strategies focused on the principles described in Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools, by Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde (Heinemann, 2005). These are best practices for classroom instruction as well as professional development.
