In the article “Beyond Hardware,” by Michele Norman, the main topics are professional development and technology. Many studies have been conducted on the issue of technology and training staff. These studies show there is not enough money spent on staff development in the most appropriate areas. Other results of the studies show that most teachers do not feel comfortable teaching through technology. However, this problem can be solved with the proper training. There are many organizations that are willing to help schools get on the right path to training teachers and effectively using technology in the classroom. The community as a whole needs to be involved in the development of training and preparing teachers and students to use more technology in school. Each school system has different amounts of their budget allotted to technology. That is why it is helpful to hire an organization to tailor a program specific to the individual needs of a school system in order to make the most out of the budget.

I believe the plan for staff development on technology has a great amount of potential. There needs to be a plan and a curriculum developed before a school system can start training teachers. I have gathered from that article that it is important to hire an outside source to help with the training and to study what is really necessary for the school to learn. One problem I have with professional development is that it is not always connected directly to student learning. Teachers are in the classroom for one main reason and that is to educate students, so it is important to make training time valuable. More often than not a staff development day is not very beneficial to the educators. Perhaps by hiring an outside source to train the teachers on current technologies will enable the staff development days to be most valuable. The best way to train a diverse group of educators is to break up into smaller groups that need the same type of training. This will ensure that the teachers are getting the best possible training and will also guarantee efficiency.