PD to Practice - How AI Can Bridge the Gap

Ineffective PD...we may not all describe it the same way, but we can spot it when we see it, or worse, when we're stuck in it. Whether we call it "sit and get" or "spray and pray", it looks something like this: one size fits all, talking about practice but not modeling them, theoretical but not practical or relevant. It can even be inspiring or engaging, but in the end, ineffective PD definitely doesn't shift practice.

PD that models best practices fairs better, but even when PD is great -- when it's differentiated and relevant, models targeted practices, and engages teachers in mindset building, reflection, and the application of new skills -- it can still take quite a lift to implement that template, framework, or tool introduced with fidelity.

It's an understandable challenge, because most PD focuses on building one new pedagogical skill or resource, but post PD implementation is multifaceted. That one skill has to make its way back into the classroom and fit into the full pedagogical puzzle, integrated with curriculum, devices, compliance, frameworks, other initiatives, and of course, broad learner variability.

The gap between learning about a skill, and implementing that skill, is where we saw a big opportunity to build a bridge using generative AI. The bridge from PD to practice is a merge issue combined with a time constraint issue, two problems AI is very good at solving. If we can create AI tools to hold the context of a classroom and a school (the specific subject, grade, infrastructure, standards, and resources available), and allow teachers to select strategies that have been introduced in PD, then we boost the learning with a viable starting point. We greatly reduce the implementation lift through this bridge.

Here's an example flow from PD to practice using blended learning, a topic upon which we frequently deliver PD.

Workshop: Engage teachers in blended PD, using one of the blended learning models, to understand the strengths and considerations of blended learning. Provide teachers with examples, tools, and templates to plan for blended learning.

AI Tool: Use the "Blend My Lesson" or other blended learning Yourwai tool to generate blended versions of existing lessons or to create new ones aligned to your classroom context.

Intersession PLCs & Coaching: Refine the lesson generated by the AI tool; share with colleagues for feedback; iterate on the practice.

This is just the start of the ways we can leverage AI for PD, but from what we're seeing, it's the most impactful thing to happen to PD in a long time. With AI tools creating this bridge between PD and practice, we finally have a chance to move beyond pockets of innovation to scaled transformation of student learning. It's only through this scale that we can hope to positively impact every learner.