In addition to the obvious inconveniences and hardships related to the pandemic, Pomona United School District found enormous opportunity to provide training to their teachers, administrators, and community – including parents and grandparents. According to Ellen Palmer, Program Administrator, Educational Technology for the Pomona Unified School District, much of their success came from “Being able to provide more professional learning to more teachers, because we were able to offer the professional learning during the regular school day for 12 months, it really allowed more teachers to take advantage. The other thing that we've done is we've also started our Inspired Educators Series. It's an afterschool professional learning that teachers can sign up for each semester. It's facilitated by EdTech teacher specialists, and they get paid. We now are leveraging our Title II funds to pay teachers to come to after-school professional learning. I think the pandemic and teachers genuinely caring about their students and really wanting to provide a learning experience that will help all students learn is why you saw a much greater adoption.
 

“Once the teachers were equipped because of their love for their kids, they were inspired to build decks or even share docs. I know a lot of our literacy coaches built decks that teachers could leverage within their classrooms. There was a lot of collaboration going on amongst teacher specialists from ed services and EdTech. I also want to give credit because our teacher specialists at tech have been absolutely amazing. Our teacher specialists became very cognizant of our adult learners and the setting that they were put into that was so very new to most of us, right. And what they did and what they continue to do, that's been fabulous. They are not just teaching teachers how to use the tools, but they're staying with our framework that we follow in terms of designing a lesson experience.”

When it comes to getting the most out of your technology, you’ll want to watch this amazing video. Program Administrator Ellen Palmer gives a step-by-step assessment of her district’s success, which incidentally will work very well in your own district going forward.