The Sewanhaka Central High School District didn’t want to leave teachers hanging as more of their students get iPads, said Christopher Nelson, the district’s technology director.
That’s why administrators held a two-day program to give teachers in Sewanhaka’s five high schools a better handle on the devices and their potential in the classroom.
The event, dubbed the “Future-Ready Sewanhaka Deeper Learning Summit,” drew 120 teachers to New Hyde Park Memorial High School on Aug. 2 and 3, Nelson said. The district partnered with the California-based EdTechTeam to offer 10 workshops led by seven educators from around the country.
Beyond showing off new apps and tools, the summit gave teachers a chance to collaborate and brainstorm about how technology could enhance their lessons, Nelson said.
“No matter how technologically advanced we get it’s still about relationships, and forming those relationships with colleagues and students,” said Dave Spinnato, a seventh-grade science teacher at Elmont Memorial High School.
The district is about to distribute about 3,000 iPads to seventh- and 10th-graders in the second year of its effort to put a device in the hands of every student, Nelson said. This year’s eighth- and ninth-graders got them last fall.
That’s a component of the district’s broader initiative to prepare students for 21st-century careers using technology, of which teacher training is also a big part, Nelson said.
The digital learning summit aimed to build on “pullout” sessions during the school year that taught teachers more basic device skills, allowing them to explore how the tablets could complement their teaching, Nelson said. Teachers from two of Sewanhaka’s component elementary school districts also attended, he said.
“The ability to kind of just take two days and focus on what they want to do for the new year is a different approach from just on-the-fly training during the school year,” Nelson said.
EdTechTeam conducted 438 training events involving 88,000 educators around the world in 2016, according to its website. The company is affiliated with Apple, making it a good partner for Sewanhaka’s iPad program, Nelson said.
Sewanhaka’s summit included sessions on iPad basics, going paperless and using apps to make lessons more visual and interactive. It also featured a keynote address from Michael Shippee, a technology coach from the upstate Liverpool school district.
The event helped Sewanhaka teachers connect with a national web of educators who are interested in classroom technology, said Spinnato, who was one of the district’s first teachers to use iPads in class.
“Don’t go in thinking it’s all about technology and technology’s going to change everything,” Spinnato said. “It’s really all about relationships.”
The district’s regular training sessions will likely be able to adopt this more global approach in the next three to five years, once teachers are more comfortable with the iPads, Spinnato said.
In the meantime, the district hopes to draw an even bigger crowd at next year’s summit, as more teachers will be using the tablets each day, Nelson said.
Based on feedback from this year’s event, “there’s certainly demand there and it was certainly well received,” Nelson said.
