Educators Get More with Online Professional Development

Professional development or professional learning has made and continues to make all the difference in the preparedness of educators in schools. Even natural talent needs to be guided when it comes to instructing several classes of 15 to 32 (or more!) of America’s students every day.

Before the 21st century, computers were used for basic functions such as playing (rather simple) video games and typing your notes from handwriting on paper to be printed off on a page with holes on the side that you tore off.

Today, with the Internet, we have all the resources we need right at the edge of our fingers. Doesn’t it make sense to also have our professional learning online where we have everything else and where we spend a great deal of our time?

For some educators, professional development used to be such a chore, something they would dread. Online professional development has provided a way for teachers to get the information and the instruction they deserve when they want it, and more importantly, when they need it.

With the shift from traditional professional development to online professional development, there are three major improvements that will help educators as they continue to learn and do all they can for their students:

1. Greater Quality for Lower Cost: Traditional professional development—the site-and-get session from a presenter paid to come to your school—would take time away from teaching and would cost the school money in substitutes for teachers. Online professional development eliminates the need for subs or time away from your students, but quality doesn’t change, at least not with PD 360. Where else can you get 120 experts on-call at no extra charge?
2. It’s There When You Need It: Say you’re having a hard time with classroom management, or struggling with how to start your own PLC, no matter where you are, at school or at home, you can find the solution to your problem right away. It could be in a video segment or by talking to one of the 900,000 educators within the online PD 360 Community, but no matter how you find the answer, the resources are there for you when you need them.
3. It Only Gets Better From Here: Because online professional development is indeed online, it is easy to update and add more content as the needs of 21st century students and teachers grow. As standards change along with the very dynamics of the classroom, professional learning will have to adapt to give educators and students the resources they need. Online professional development allows for new resources in a matter or weeks to months instead of waiting for the next version of a book to be released or the next lecture from an education professional.

Online professional development wasn’t created just to be another things online; it was developed to give educators quality resources where they are and when they need them.

School Improvement Network-Atomic Learning Partnership Gives Educators New Tools

Districts across the U.S. are utilizing numerous resources to provide teachers with a well-rounded professional development program. While the use of multiple resources allows districts to provide comprehensive training, it creates a challenge for end users in accessing resources from various websites and managing multiple logins.

To begin addressing this challenge, Atomic Learning and School Improvement Network announce a collaboration to provide shared resources to guide educators on a path to technology-empowered learning.

With the release of Atomic Learning’s new Effective Online Teaching and Learning spotlight program and PD 360’s Technology Pedagogy training, the companies have come together to build a free educator forum where all educators can explore the topic of online teaching and learning.

Learn more about the benefits of this partnership here.

Duane Sprague talks with Jon Blissenbach, Director of Product Management at Atomic Learning, about the recent partnership between Atomic Learning and School Improvement Network: