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Staff development:Integrating ICT effectively in t..
Staff development:Integrating ICT effectively in teaching
Start date: Jul 1, 2014,
End date: Jun 30, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
A΄ Engomis’ Primary school in Nicosia, Cyprus, is preparing to deploy a strategic plan on the development of teaching tools for all subject areas, in relation to ICT and interactive boards in particular. The effective integration of ICT in teaching and learning has been one of our school's main objectives. Recently we have been supplied with interactive boards. The use of interactive boards is a pioneer field for the Cyprus reality. The number of schools that are supplied with interactive boards is increasing rapidly, raising the need for teacher's professional development. Our school is aiming to become a pioneer in the field. Our projects main objectives that refer to classroom teachers, the deputy head teachers, evaluators and the school’s principal, are:
-to acquire new and stimulating teaching methods using ICT and in particularly to learn how to exploit the potential of the interactive board
-to acquire skills for planning and managing collaborative projects
-to learn how they can best use the existing ICT infrastructure in the organisation to improve teaching and learning
-To develop teaching material and tools that can be use in the teaching with interactive boards in all subject areas
-To comprehend the methods and structures that will lead towards organizational goals
-To envision a tailor-made school plan by choosing the right focus, involving stakeholders, planning open-ended processes and the follow-up, asking the appropriate questions and give guidance
-To become confident in facilitating teaching and training
- To gain knowledge on the management of the meta-level; on negotiating the task by involving stakeholders and dealing with the unexpected
-To monitor and evaluate the implemented policy of the school
-To provide data on how to advance and re-design the school’s policy, so to reach the set goals
Most of the members of the school staff will participate in seminars, according to the school’s teacher’s professional development policy. Head teacher and deputy head teachers will learn how to inspire, motivate and empower others to work for their visions and to engage in learning and change processes. At the same time they will learn how to set goals and priorities in order to produce concrete results in the benefit of their school. By attending the courses classroom teachers can become quickly digitally literate, confident and competent enough to create a collaborative, interactive classroom experience for their students. They will also be able to see best practice in teaching and learning, using ICT.
All the staff educated will form the school's team/working group that will develop a scheme of work for the development of teaching material using ICT and interactive boards. It will also develop a five year plan on how to disseminate the knowledge gained and the material produced. The plan will provide dissemination of results in both local and international level.
At a school level, through staff meetings or face to face meetings we will present the knowledge gained to other teachers who did not participate in it. In addition they will produce a school database of tools useful for teaching which will be shared through Dropbox (all teachers have access to). They will also participate in a Facebook discussion group concerning web tools.
At a national level, teachers and the managing team will disseminate the gained knowledge to other schools through a conference that will be organised in cooperation with the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute, local universities and their pedagogical departments as well as local NGO interested in the use of ICT in the learning procedure.
At a European and international level, our school has its own community at the ODS portal (Open Discovery Space - a socially-powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adoption of eLearning resources) through which we will share our knowledge, teaching material, web tools, ideas, good practices etc. We are also a part of a European Programme called "Living Schools lab” which is a pan-European network of ‘living schools’ demonstrating and showcasing a diverse range of innovative pedagogical practice involving ICT. Through this network we will contribute to continuous professional development by exchanging ideas, tools, good practices and we will collaborate in producing teaching lessons. Furthermore through e-twinning we will exchange good practices and we will form partnerships with other schools across Europe. Finally we will upload useful material to our school's website.
There will be an ongoing evaluation and monitoring. The school's head teacher will monitor the course participants' learning on a regular basis after the course. The resulting improvements will then be rolled out to other non-participating teaching members through a shadowing programme, whereby teachers will team-teach and and thus the entire school community will benefit.