School Staff Development

Staff development is a critical aspect of ICT incorporation in education.  In some schools, there are established programs geared towards developing ICT skills among staff, in others, such programs are nonexistent. 

At one of the schools I teach, there is no staff development program for ICT.  This school has an IT lab and multimedia projectors and many students own netbooks.  However, most students use the netbooks for gaming and the school has inadequate resources for ICT integration.  Furthermore, teachers training in ICT is limited.

In preparing a staff development programme for ICT, the following principles are important considerations:

1. Identifying and acquiring adequate resources;
2. Resource sharing and management;
3. ICT integration vs teaching ICT;
4. Teaching/learning strategies for ICT integration;
5. The need for careful lesson planning;
6. Adequate support structures;
7. Security and;
8. Ongoing staff training and assessment.

Hopefully, an effective program for staff development in ICT will be put in place soon.

"The basis of all learning is wonder."

~L Darrien Ollivierre