Online professional development is designed to provide training that is flexible and targets specific needs. It can provide effective training designed to help educators develop the skills and knowledge needed to teach 21st century literacy skills to students.

The benefits of online learning for educational components include:

• Training that can be completed in the comfort of your own home
• Training that is learner-centered
• Training that integrates technology with learning
• Training with anytime anywhere access

The professional development follows principles that are critical for guiding training in the education arena.

• Improve all students’ learning
• Improve teacher effectiveness
• Set high standards for teachers
• Promote continuous staff learning
• Enhance staff intellectual and leadership capacity

Online staff development has clearly become an intense focal point for many school districts. The growing importance of staff development is driven by the need for a constant supply of qualified instructional and non-instructional staff coupled with the requirement to meet growing accountability. The online learner-centered professional development is about bringing together the many influences involved with teacher learning. One of the influences is working toward making education a more real-world experience so children can be successful in their learning. This type of teacher learning will hopefully guarantee that every child will have the opportunity to learn and to be successful in the classroom.

Teachers need online staff development that requires them to become constructivist learner of specific concepts, become skilled at how children learn, investigate ways of approaching tasks, and pedagogical strategies to increase students’ understanding. Effective online staff development enables educators to provide challenging developmentally-appropriate curricula that engage students in ways of thinking and knowing. The impact of this type of staff development efforts will be significant when it come to the overall performance of our students.