In the New Year, many teachers are between semesters in their teacher training programs. Savvy school district administrators take advantage of this lull in academic rigor to bring in staff development consultants to help champion new initiatives. They want to bring everyone up to speed on changing environments in the classroom, for old teachers and newly minted professionals.

At least they are doing this if they have the funding for it. It never seems to make any difference, in robust budgets or lean years; there are not enough dollars for PD. It really needs to be our first priority and it’s a great way to start a relationship with a foundation. Asking for funds for teacher training shows the grantor that you want to deliver services in a professional and well-advised environment. You can’t embark on a blended learning project if your teachers don’t have a clue what blended learning is or how it can make a difference in the classroom.

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We’re all looking for funds to improve our technology picture in schools. With the advent of blended learning (see my article last time), we find we will need equipment and software to fulfill the promises of this model.

It used to be that we would write grants for “computer labs”. We’d create projects that required the use of big desktop computers that took up four big library tables in the media center. I’m a former Library Media Specialist so I know how this bandwagon evolved. I was a contrarian at the time, and thought we were spending too much time and money on big mechanical boxes at the expense of our book budgets.

We all grow up eventually (me included). Now we’re looking at other ways of doing things. New tablet computers are taking the place of the boxes (thank goodness). There is still a place for big powerful computers, but portable laptop labs are filling these needs.

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