There are approximately 1500 teachers in Scottsdale. The SUSD Tech Plan funding and implementation schedule is designed to be accomplished over a period of five years. That implies that it will be necessary to train 300 teachers/year.

If we average 30 teachers in each class, and each teacher is required to take 40 hours of instruction, that implies approximately 400 class-hours/year. If we offer 4 weeks of instruction in the summer, that is 160 class-hours. That leaves 240 hours of instruction to be accomplished during the schools year. If there are 30 weeks available for training, it will require us to offer 8 hours of training/week. That training load is possible, but will limit other trainings in the district.

Many of the current training topics will be incorporated into the Tech Plan trainings - as a matter of fact, that is part of the design of the program. We have a chance to introduce every teacher to curriculum standards and resources, and to acquire some level of proficiency in technology – and to reward them for the effort.

Understandably, not everything will work exactly as outlined above. Even if it did, current technology training staff would be stretched to the limit. The solution to the problem is a train-the-trainer model. This model would train experts at each campus, and they would train their individual campus. The added benefit of this approach is the presence of a local “expert” on each campus to help with questions and issues which may arise.