Onalaska school district moving to online training for teachers

No longer, do teachers have to come in for training during summer.

A new way for teachers in the Onalaska School District to learn about technology will become a reality.

Gregg Hilker, instructional technology services coordinator with the district, says the old process forced teachers to pick a day in the summer to be taught the material.

“The folks would come for a couple of hours of instruction from me,” Hilker said. “They would then have kind of an assignment they would do and I thought, ‘Why couldn’t the instruction part be online?’ Let folks do it whenever they want to.”

Hilker says the new format would be a series of videos that he would create, telling teachers how the technology could be used in their classroom.

Instruction would be given on Google Classrooms, Smart Boards, and more.

“Essentially, it would be kind of a self-paced learning experience,” Hilker said.

Instructional director Roger Fruit with the district says you’ll be seeing more and more of this.

“The old days of sit and get, and then just learn something, and not have a plan to put it into affect to impact student learning are gone,” Fruit said. “And that’s good.”

District officials say it would also allow Hilker to have more time during the school year, as teachers could look back at the videos if they had problems with the technology.