Technology @ School: Professional Development Opportunities on the Internet

TECHNOLOGy @ SCHOOL

professIonal development opportunItIes on the Internet

whether you are preparing to teach, you are experiencing your first year in the classroom, or you are a veteran teacher, professional growth and development are critical to your teaching success. the internet provides a rich array of technology resources for novice and veteran teachers to assist in their development as effective classroom teachers. new teachers especially need assistance with job search information. teachers-teachers.com is a free teacher-recruitment service that provides candidates with the opportunity to complete online applications and cover letters for openings that are posted on the site that match their preferences. teachers.net also has a “Jobs for teachers” page on its site.

A site that has consistently provided useful resources for teachers is Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything, where you will find a wide range of internet resources, such as assessments and rubrics, resources for teaching with iPads, and articles for creating a more active classroom.

Beginning and veteran teachers can find internet resources in just about any subject area at a variety of websites, and each site is likely to have links to additional web resources. Scholastic inc. sponsors a website for teachers, which includes a series of articles with insightful advice for surviving the first year of teaching, in addition to useful classroom materials for the beginning teacher.

Although thousands of sites address the professionaldevelopment needs of educators, a few are typical of the comprehensive reach these sites have. the new teacher Survival Guide website includes information on using cutting-edge technology and provides access to new teacher blogs. PBS LearningMedia provides links to standards-based curriculum resources as well as professional-development activities. Edutopia contains “diverse and innovative media resources” that are easily accessible, and the video library is impressive. Education world includes pages on technology integration and lifestyle issues.

Finally, all of the sites feature teachers’ blogs, twitter, or Facebook pages that are designed to provide advice to the new teacher as well as the opportunity to pose questions about specific problems in forum discussions.

that such incentive systems are necessary to improve overall teacher quality by motivating classroom teachers and encouraging high-quality people to enter and stay in the profession.40 Although polls show 82 percent of the public supports the concept of using teacher performance to determine salaries or bonuses, 61 percent oppose using student performance on standardized tests as a factor.41

Teachers have historically expressed reservations about such plans. Some argue that teachers’ work is complicated and difficult to measure and that linking assessments to individual teachers is fraught with inaccuracies. Teachers and their professional organizations feel more comfortable with multiple factors comprising their evaluations, including observations, contributions outside of the classroom, and professional learning activities. Where merit plans have been implemented, according to some reports, teachers have often believed that the wrong people were selected for preferential pay. Some observers fear that such rewards go to relatively few teachers at the expense of many others and threaten unity and collegiality among educators.42 The need, critics say, is to involve teachers in the design and implementation of a compensation-reform plan that focuses on helping teachers become more successful in the classroom.43 The Taking Issue box presents some arguments for and against merit pay.

40Gene V. Glass and David C. Berliner, “Chipping Away: Reforms That Don’t Make a Difference,” Educational Leadership (Summer 2014), pp. 28–33. 41Al Ramirez, “Merit Pay Misfires,” Educational Leadership (December 2010), pp. 58–55; and William Bushaw and Valerie J. Calderon, “Americans Put Teacher Quality on Center Stage: The 46th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools: Part II,” Phi Delta Kappan (September 2014), pp. 49–61. 42John Rosales, “Pay Based on Test Scores,” (n.d.) at www.nea.org/home/36780.htm (January 14, 2015); and Motoko Rich, “Middle-Class Pay Elusive for Teachers, Report Says,” The New York Times (December 3, 2014). 43Nora Carr, “The Pay-for-Performance Pitfall,” American School Board Journal (February 2008), pp. 38–39; and Gary W. Ritter and Nathan C. Jensen, “The Delicate Task of Developing an Attractive Merit Pay Plan for Teachers,” Phi Delta Kappan (May 2010), pp. 32–37.