Inspecting Technology Integration Innovation at Albemarle County Public Schools

 

(Edutopia.com, 2015)

Hola, musers!🙋‍♂️

     It's that time again--time for celebration of technology integration! 💻📱

     In the case of the Albemarle County Public Schools System, there is a great influx of innovation being spread across their district in how they support their educators through providing proper professional development, authentic learning assistance for engaging students, and best technology practices between educators and students alike via different facets of technological knowledge and skills (Edutopia.com, 2015).

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     In watching through the entirety of the Albemarle County Public Schools YouTube Video shown above, it becomes very apparent that their instructional coaches do a lot of work behind the scenes of not only helping their educators work on creating effective lesson plans, but also strongly encourage their educators to critically think through the "how" and "why" of what they are teaching on-site with their participating students, faculty and staff as well (Edutopia.com, 2015).

(Edutopia.com, 2015)

     Through the utilization of a robust instructional coaching network, the Albemarle Public Schools System is able to cover all of their twenty-seven schools with twenty-four instructional coaches that work across at least three different schools (Edutopia.com, 2015).  

     The instructional coaches get together with their school educators to figure out what they need and what they want to achieve in their classrooms over the course of a given school year.  This network of instructional coaches, in turn, collaborate with one another to share the work of their educator pairings and to further infuse technology resources and tools as integral parts of learning units through project-based learning.  Usually, this is all achieved through lesson plan modeling and on-site educator observations to provide proper real-time educator feedback (Edutopia.com, 2015).  

     All-in-all, the Albemarle Public Schools System ensures that all five phases of The Collegial Coaching Model For Technology Integration are followed up and followed through by their instructional coaches and corresponding educators: Establishing The Need; Creating Partnerships; Targeting Differentiated Projects; Assessing The Progress; and Reflecting On The Integration (Alaniz & Wilson, 2015, p. 37). 

References

Edutopia. (2015, September 18). Instructional Coaching: Seeding District-Wide Innovation. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0IrZ5jrvCo

Alaniz, K., & Wilson, D. K. (2015). Naturalizing Digital immigrants: The Power Of Collegial Coaching For Technology Integration. Rowman & Littlefield.

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     Well, my musers, that's all I have at the moment!  I hope all of your school programs can integrate 21st Century technology through effective means as seen nationwide in programs like that of Albemarle County Public Schools--in due time through due diligence.  Until then, feel free to discuss in the comment section down below how your school programs are doing with technology and what kinds of approaches your schools are taking to empower educators and students alike towards a much brighter future.