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Nothing is as critical to student learning as the classroom teacher. Ensuring that every student has an exceptional teacher begins with improving teacher preparation and professional development programs -- a major task that requires collaboration between institutions of higher education, state education departments and school districts.
As with every education reform issue, the thoughtful application of technology can help accelerate and support efforts to raise the quality of instruction. For example, providing innovative tools that enable the creation and sharing of effective lesson plans, instructional strategies, and methodologies for organizing and delivering instruction can provide immeasurable support for both new and experienced teachers.
IBM is working with nine Reinventing Education grant sites in the United States to ensure that teachers in all phases of their careers have the opportunity to learn new skills, grow existing ones, and explore new methods for ensuring their students' academic success. Each grant site includes representatives across the teacher's education and professional development continuum - institutions of higher education, departments of education, rural and urban school districts, and professional development organizations/schools. Our goal is to "reinvent" teacher preparation and professional development programs to ensure that every teacher has access to the materials, standards, best practices, peer support, mentors, and classroom experience to be effective.
To support this goal, IBM is developing electronic portfolio tools. These portfolios will lead to a body of knowledge and work that teachers can use to continuously reflect upon, adapt, and develop to grow skills and ultimately improve their teaching. For example, using these tools, a beginning teacher might start by collecting their first lesson plans, video of actual teaching experiences, and a resume. A more experienced teacher might ask peers to review lesson plans, adding the updated versions to their portfolio, collecting video case studies and other artifacts that demonstrate effective teaching practices they have used in their classrooms. These collections, or portfolios, of their work can be submitted in support of one or more professional certifications. Finally, a teacher-leader might collect their own work, plus mentoring materials they have found effective in assisting other teachers with their professional development.
In addition to electronic portfolios, the grants will create collaborative professional development tools for new and experienced teachers. Tools include standards-based lesson planning, resource sharing, online mentoring, and collaborative support networks.
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