Friday, 11 May 2012

Teachers Professional Development

 
It is essential that teachers of Digital Technologies receive ongoing training and development if they are to facilitate relevant learning. Unfortunately this generally means that teachers undertake training on Saturdays, Sundays or holidays. Fair enough you may say, but would this happen in government or private sector businesses? We are talking essential training here, and in some cases (not at my college) teachers I have met pay their own fees. (Is there a tax rebate possible?)
My view is that  teachers of Digital technologies should be allocated 2 weeks training p.a. and $5-$10k in fees each year, at least whilst new standards are being introduced and many teachers require up-skilling. The current “voluntary” and ad hoc approaches are not good enough in my view.

Comment: I agree with the statements that are made above, we need training, and I lose a lot of time to be able to keep up to date with what is going on, though people do tell me I have 12 weeks off, though in reality I have four, most of my holidays is working on building up my profession, through reading, programming, developing resources, ideas, interaction with colleagues, attending conferences both in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.

Digital Technologies is an ever changing field, I would like other curriculum areas to challenge us on how much there areas have changed, at present this is due to the change of standards, but with Digital Technologies we have a whole new curriculum area with learning objectives for the first time, and they are still be developed, Level 3 NCEA and NZC Level 8 have yet to be finalised and there are a number of issues with the new levels that have yet to be sorted out.

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