For the past two summers, PeachStar Education Services has offered Georgia educators the Educator In Residence (EIR) program, a series of intensive professional development trainings designed to assist you with your professional growth and enhance classroom effectiveness. Increasingly, Georgia teachers and media specialists have indicated a desire to take part in these trainings, necessitating PeachStar?s restructuring of our current training model.
PeachStar has typically conducted EIR trainings on a face-to-face model at the GPB facility in Atlanta that limits the number of individuals who may participate. For example, during the 2002 Educator In Residence program, 40 media specialists had spaces in PeachStar?s Institute for New Media Specialists. By shifting our training paradigm in a direction that makes use of regional trainings and distance learning technology, PeachStar will be able to increase the number of new media specialists reached during EIR from 40 to more than 250.
PeachStar will begin shifting our training strategy this summer with the 2003 Educator In Residence program. In addition to offering trainings here in Atlanta, we will also offer trainings such as video production, media specialist training, and selected technology trainings in locations across the state in order to facilitate attendance by educators who live in outlying areas of the state.
More importantly, though, PeachStar plans to implement trainings via webcasting, the delivery of live and archived video broadcasts via the Internet. In answer to educator requests for professional development on demand, this technology will allow an infinite number of educators across the state to benefit from PeachStar training at times convenient to you.
