In a recent survey of professional development opportunities offered by the TDSB, the author concluded that less than 10% are delivered through online mode of delivery: currently, on the TDSBs Key To Learn web portal, ________ of _________ professional

Teacher Professional Development in the Digital Age

In a recent survey of professional development opportunities offered by the TDSB, the author concluded approximately 5% are delivered through an online mode of delivery: currently, on the TDSBs Key to Learn web portal, only 2 of 42 professional development opportunities are offered online.A single department within the TDSB, the Teaching and Learning with Technology team, is spearheading online teacher professional development, and accounts for all of the online sessions offered within the TDSB. Outside of this group, instructors who lead professional development sessions (instructional leaders) have yet to integrate technology into their sessions. Teachers may be slow to integrate technology into their classrooms but their students, K-12 learners, live in a technology-rich environment when outside of school. Inside school, they are asked to shut off their technology to focus on learning using traditional methods. When these students move on to college or university, they will find that those institutions have moved ahead with integration of educational technology. The traditional modes of teaching are becoming increasingly alien to these K-12 students. In order to update their mode of delivery, K-12 teachers must have new modes of delivery modeled for them in professional development sessions.The board is recommended to employ instructional design professionals to do the following: an analysis should be conducted to determine which professional development courses are suitable for migration to an online delivery format not all courses are suitable for the online format, some may be more suitable for the face-to-face classroom, or a blended model courses that are deemed suitable for online or partial online delivery should be assessed to determine whether the synchronous or asynchronous format is more appropriate. apply best practices of instructional design to develop courses a learning community of teachers needs to be fostered research indicates that learning is more accomplished more effectively when it occurs within a community instructional leaders should be trained in online modes of course delivery

These initiatives are beyond the mandate and capacity of the Teaching and Learning with Technology team. The team is composed of only 5 people: a principal, a program coordinator, a secondary-level instructor and 2 elementary-level instructors. The mandate of the team is to train teachers in the integration of technology into the classroom. They are not tasked with coordinating online professional development within the TDSB, nor with training instructional leaders of professional development sessions. The TDSB is recommended to increase funding and staffing for teacher professional development. Either the existing team should be expanded and given adequate resources to implement the above goals, or a new team created that has the exclusive focus of improving teacher professional development within the organization.

Page 2 of 2Rob Kahlon, West Humber Collegiate Institute, 1675 Martin Grove Road, Toronto, M9V 3S3Phone: (416) 394-7470, Email: rob.kahlon@tdsb.on.ca