Dive Brief:
- Training for teachers, district officials and school leaders is critical to coming up with a tech plan and using blended learning in the classroom.
- Game plans need to account for individual district needs as well as loftier goals and ambitions, while also accounting for budgetary restrictions and fiscal realities.
- Cross-district and professional-to-professional collaboration can help share good ideas and strategies for success between schools, including having experts liase with teachers.
Dive Insight:
Questions have hovered around how best to utilize the new $4 billion computer science iniative recently introduced by the Obama administration, and many point to increased teacher training as a worthy endeavor. 'Computer Science For All' is within President Obama's budget proposal for fiscal year 2017, and means to bring skills like coding into K-12 classrooms.
Tech companies like Google have noticed the need for heightened teacher training. Last summer, the company launched a new teacher training center to prepare teachers to use popular Google-brand education tools in the classroom, like Google Apps for Education (GAFE) and the suite of tools that are pre-loaded onto Chromebooks. Other businesses have leapt at the opportunity to provide individualized digital PD for teachers, which can also help save districts money.
