Overview of Technology Integration Teacher Training Program 2017
Happy New Year! Welcome to a new and exciting school term!!
The Department of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations is proud to announce plans for the Technology Integration Training program for 2017.
This year, scholarships will be provided to 50 educators to enrol in the six-week online course in Virtual Tutoring. Some of the teachers who were enrolled in the two ICT Integration courses last year had in fact done so well that their tutors recommended them to go further and enrol in the Virtual Tutoring course. It is hoped that these teachers will be more than willing and ready to take up this challenge. This course is scheduled to begin during the second week of February 2017.
For the first time, scholarships will be provided to at least 25 school principals to enroll in a blended (online and face-to-face) course in Leadership and Management of Projects for Innovation in Education. The arrival of this course is quite timely, as we know that principals now have to manage a lot of change, not to mention the fast pace of technological influence, within their school environment. This course is scheduled to begin during the first week of March 2017.
The two online courses – in Project Based Approaches and Collaboration in the Digital Classroom – will be offered concurrently for this cohort. This means that teachers will only be able to enroll in one of the two courses and not both. Please note that the total number of teachers who can enroll for either of these two courses is 100. This is a significant reduction from last year. Both courses will run during the same eight-week period from April 01 to May 30, 2017.
A series of four one-day face-to-face workshops will be held as a component of this program. The focus of these workshops will be the use of the Google Classroom Learning Platform in schools. The goals are to introduce teachers to the platform, to expose them to the potential of the platform as an assistive tool for their classroom instruction and to train teachers in how to make the best use of the platform. All teachers who enrol for the Virtual Tutoring course and the two online courses are required to attend one of these workshops. Your place of residence or the school that you teach at will help determine which day you will attend the workshop and at which location. These workshops are scheduled for the first week of March 2017.
All persons interested in enrolling in courses for the Teacher ICT Integration Training Program 2017 should follow the link below to complete and submit an application form. Remember that you must be resident and an active teacher in a public or private school in Saint Lucia to qualify for enrolment. It is important that you apply early since the number of spaces has been reduced and is limited! Please note that your Google email address is preferred for your application submission.
Competencies in Technology Integration in Education skills are not only desired by most teachers in Saint Lucia but are also becoming a strong prerequisite for functioning as facilitators of learning at all of our educational institutions. Teachers should make the best of this opportunity. It is very inspiring to see the many teachers who take it upon themselves and come up with interesting and innovative ways of leveraging technology in their classroom.
A policy aim of The Department of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations is to see that more training and professional development activities such as this are made available to all teachers. The expected outcome is that more teachers will gain both the competencies and confidence to make the best use of the vast amounts of digital learning resources that are now available.
Link to Application Form