Early this month I had the opportunity to do some work with a team of nine other Apple Professional Development trainers in Upper Township, New Jersey. They were rolling out a teacher laptop program and they really wanted to capitalize on the excitement of new modern mobile technology. Each teacher was getting a Smartboard System and MacBooks.

What really set this training apart was that in all ten of the training rooms, there was a district administrator participating in the workshop. Not so much supervising as participating. From the superintendent down to the dean... participating.

What does the administration communicate by doing this?

• I am a lifelong learner.
• I don’t know it all.
• This training is important.
• Your time here is important.
• I am interested in this.
• I want to know what is possible.
• I want to see how hard this is.
• I want to know how this could impact learning in our school system.

I really expect the results of this training are going to be very different from most trainings I do, because this district knows how to lead by example.

Tags: training, inservice, APD, Project-Based Learning, technology literacy