Continuing professional development is the systematic maintenance and improvement of knowledge, skills and competence, and the enhancement of learning, undertaken by an individual throughout his or her working life.' (Institute of Continuing Professional Development)
The beauty of teaching is that it changes and everyday is different, it’s also perhaps one of the biggest challenges. Teachers knowledge and understanding needs to change and improve all the time to stay ahead of current pedagogical thinking and new curriculum topics and exam syllabus. An area some teachers find the most challenging is technology, it’s changing all the time and can have huge benefits for us professionally as well as supporting student learning. But finding the time and the money for CPD is always difficult and there are always competing priorities and pressures.
As schools move to the cloud and embrace new services such as Office365 they offer huge benefits in the way we work; in saving time; in managing student work, marking and assessment as well as identifying some savings on school budgets. However, teachers will need training and development in how to use and embrace cloud services. They will also need ongoing support and training and not just a staff meeting or an INSET day.
Read here: Make more use of cloud services
Using the technology to provide Professional Development can help teachers to feel more confident in using it, provides opportunities to recognise the learning that has been undertaken and importantly enables teachers to have ongoing access and support. Blended learning using a mixture of face to face and online is often the best model to support ongoing embedding of the skills that teachers are learning.
Our simple and easy to follow Office365 courses provide an opportunity for teachers to learn some new skills, access learning (and support) on demand at a time to suit them and provides a management module for school leaders to identify where additional support might be needed.
Contact the team and hear how you can get started with open access to training materials to support CPD.
