Making the professional development-student safety connection

When our district implemented a new student safety platform last year, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough to simply roll out the new technology and expect administrators and teachers to embrace it and engage with it. Like any new technology, this one would require both upfront and online professional development. I also knew that this had to take place on the administrators’ and teachers’ turfs, not in our IT department. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not really a “classroom person.” I’ve spent most of my time on the technology side of the educational environment. However, I also have two school-age children of my own, so it was pretty obvious to me that we needed a platform that would not only keep our kids safe online by alerting the right people when students used profanity in emails or documents; viewed inappropriate content online; threatened self-harm; or bullied their peers.Even before rolling out the Gaggle student safety management platform, we worked with our vendor to set up a robust professional development program. Here’s how we did it.