Continuing teacher education is required of all teachers throughout their careers.  There are many ways to achieve credits for this, and is it vital to maintain the proper number of credits in order to keep you teaching license.  Most school districts hold in-service days where teachers received credits for attending, and attendance is required.  Often teachers are asked to attend conferences in their field of education in order to receive CTE credits.  It is now even possible to receive CTE credits from courses completed online.  Each method has its pros and cons, and generally the best bet is some combination of all of them.

Teacher in service days are held on days when there are no students and teachers become the students for the day.   Speakers may be brought in from the outside or in-house, and the program is usually general and useful for all subject areas.  These are a great supplement to any continuing teacher education program, but there are times when teachers need subject specific CTE.  Providing this at an in service day can get costly and time consuming, requiring programs and speakers for various subjects and breaking teachers into groups.  The planning and expense that goes into this type of in house program is often not logical.

Most often subject specific continuing teacher education is received by allowing teachers to attend conferences.  These are usually held over the course of a few days in another town, and require travel and an overnight stay for the teachers attending.  The information gleaned from the sessions held at the conferences is most often very useful, and you gain the double benefit of the teachers getting a break from the classroom and avoiding burnout.  However, there is the added cost of travel, meals, and lodging, and finding a substitute for those attending the conference.  Conferences are also not always available when it is necessary to obtain CTE either,

Online continuing teacher education eradicates most of the issues with the previous two ways of earning CTE.  I can be subject specific, does not require travel, and can be completed at any time and from anywhere that internet access is available.  However, there is some debate as to how much information is actually retained from these courses.  By nature they are pretty much reading material and answering questions.  The format works well, but is easy to pass without truly retaining and understanding the information.  Another option for online learning is finding a conference that is offering a webcast, making it possible to attend certain sessions and receive credit for them by watching them online.

In the end, the best way to ensure teachers get the continuing teacher education required to maintain their license is probably to incorporate a combination of each of these options.  By combing and changing which options are used, some of the drawbacks can be mitigated, while the benefits are exploited to their fullest extent.  The combinations that work best will vary from school to school, but the increase in online CTE courses definitely adds a nice option to the mix.