Dive Brief:

• Creekside Middle School in Patterson Unified School District, east of San Francisco, purchased Chromebooks for classroom use last year, following that with a unique model for professional development.
• The Modesto Bee reports students organized the Tech Boost Conference in collaboration with Google for Education presenters, crafting breakout sessions based on what they were most interested in doing in the classroom.
• While some Creekside teachers were resistant to the new technology at first, student engagement won a lot of converts and now students benefit from better in-class activities as well as improved communication with teachers they ask questions of via email.

Dive Insight:

The K-12 community regularly discusses ways to improve professional development for teachers. In surveys, teachers routinely report the professional development opportunities in their school are not relevant. As administrators work to design better PD with teacher input, they can add student ideas to the list. Students are stakeholders in the conversation as much as teachers are, and at the middle and high school level, they are digital natives who may have insights teachers and administrators would not have thought of.

Key in this era of tight funding and big expectations is capitalizing on the expertise at all levels of districts and schools. Shared leadership invites teachers to be more engaged and design professional development in areas they are most willing to grow. Asking students how they would like to use computers in the classroom brings one more relevant perspective to the table.