As an educator, I know that some professional developments are more beneficial to me than other ones are.  That’s why it’s very crucial when planning a professional development to be sure the target audience is set.  It’s also crucial to engage learners in enough challenges without going beyond their comfort zone.  This helps keep the educators learning new things without turning a deaf ear on things that seem to hard.  When presented in the correct way, using many different learning styles, professional development will help prepare teachers to help their students achieve the goals set by the development team.

• New material:  If teachers feel like they’re being taught something they’ve already implemented in the classroom, they’re going to lose interest in the professional development very quickly.
• Engaging Activities:  Sitting and listening to someone speak is not how educators were taught to teach.  So why should they have to do that when learning new concepts and/or ideas during an inservice?  Educators should be actively involved in their learning, just as lessons are planned for students to be actively involved in theirs!
• Practice Time:  When learning about something new, it’s only fair to get time to practice, engross yourself or discuss how it can be implemented in the classroom right away.  The less time there is to do this during the development, the better the likelihood that the educator won’t do it at all.  This can be done either through homework to be brought back the following meeting or right there in the development where qeustions can be asked of the leader.
• Activities:  If there are no activities to take part it, and it’s only a discussion of test scores/goals, the educators will wonder why they couldn’t have just received an email of the information, instead of wasting their own time coming out to hear about it. 

View for yourself!

We know what it feels like to be lectured for an hour on something we anticipate we may never use again.

We know what it sounds like to have someone tell us “engage, engage, engage” within our classroom and then we’re forced to sit and listen to that same person “discuss, discuss, discuss” with us for the next hour or so.

So how do you plan Professional Development so that educators walk out of the session feeling engaged, motivated and cheerful? 

Just as students need to to feel as though they’re learning things pertinent to their own personal lives, so should the teachers!

• safe environment:  educators should feel comfortable collaborating with others and sharing their ideas
• Intellectual freedom and experimenting:  teachers should be able to dive into a new concept, activity or idea and see hands on how it could help their students
• Everyone is learning: including the teacher of the session.  Everyone brings their own ideas to the table and should be open to hearing new ones from other people.
• Self-directed:  shouldn’t be just the session leader talking/discussing.  Everyone should get a chance to engage themselves in the development.
• Pacing:  development shouldn’t be too much at one time.  The work should not be too challenging, but should not be too easy either.  Attendees should feel like they’ve learned something new, but shouldn’t feel as though they have to spend hours researching more facts in order to implement the activity into their classroom.
• Active Involement:  Teachers should feel like students, being engaged in the activity.
• Regular Feedback:  attendees should provide a reflection about the development, including ways to improve for next time.
• Multiple Intelligences: By reaching out in different ways,  educators will be more actively engaged in the learning of new concepts/ideas.

When these strategies are put into place for teachers, it zeroes in on the key points of the development and cuts back on how many teachers walk out of the session feeling like it was a waste of time. 

Rubric to help aid in creating successful and organized professional development!

Principles for adult learners

•  What areas are students struggling in? (this can be taken from classwork samples, MSA data or quarterly assessments/fluency scores)
• What new knowledge do students need to know in order to better adress these areas of need?
• What new skills do teachers need to become proficient at in order to address these needs?

Implementing the plan:

• clear thesis identifying goals
• specify the teachers to benefit from the development
• observable/measurable outcomes
• evaluation tools to be used
• small group time for students involved
• Long term goal should always be to improve student learning, though the short term goal would focus on implementing ways for teachers to be better able to help students.

21st Century Learner

• able to multi task
• uses sound and images to convey content and better understand concepts
• needs to be actively engaged in the classroom
• collaboration with peers is the best way for them to learn
• fascination with new technology
• want to learn through exploration of concepts (virtual trips/visual activities)
• very interactive with classmates and the curriculum
• practical applications of real world content
• learning no longer stops when school does: can continue after school with chat rooms, etc on home computers.
• 97% of students feel that technology is a key part of education
• most students admit to having email accounts(81%) , blogs, wikis, etc

21st Century Teacher

• teambuilding activities to help students feel more comfortable in their learning environment
• collaboration with peers
• collaboration with peers from other areas of the world
• projects should include multi-media activities
• allow students to create lessons/parts of lessons
• preparation for jobs in the real world using technology
• students should be allowed to TALK and CREATE!
• Use of web for instant access to facts and information
• students are more creators than  just stationary learners in the 21st century classroom

21st Century Curriculum

• more use of media tools to enhance learning and prepare kids for working/living in the changing society
• students need to participate actively in the learning process through technology
• internet safety should be a part of the classroom routine
• technology goals should be made aware to all staff members as an essential addition to the curriculum
• assessment of technology standards. 

First:  I now have a cart in my room with a projector and arm that has capabilities beyond my wildest dreams (as a teacher of course!).  I’m able to display student work, write notes along with the students and quckly put up manipulatives and directions for students to follow independently or with other students.

 Second:  The new computer in my room has faster capabilities and no longer takes forever to load up a page.  The students are able to take AR tests very quickly without having to wait too long!

Third:  UNITED STREAMING!  The abilities of this technology are amazing.  You have to have a username and password (Frederick County recently began subscribing).  You can look up images, whole videos, clips or clip art on any subject.  From math to Social Studies to Language Arts, you’re able to incorporate interactive learning into any lesson!  It’s very simple to use.  You search the topic of your choice, it offers you a selection of items and you click on the preview button until you find one you’d like to download.  It’s so easy, even a technologically impaired classroom can handle it!

 Those are the three major pieces of technology that have ‘reversed the curse’ in my classroom.  I actually get excited to learn about more technological capabilities for the classroom, instead of fearing that it will not work when I try to use it!

 So…for anyone else who may have been hesitant to use new technology before…take a lesson from me!  Go ahead and embrace it!  Technology is the way into the future and the more students see it, the better off they will be!

Or have you ever found a resource for a class paper and then, when you went to cite it, realized you couldn’t use it because you didn’t bookmark the site?

Or have you ever had a colleague tell you “oh, I found this awesome resource online” but then they couldn’t remember where that resource was so you’re stuck not using the wonderful things they found?

This has happened to me numerous times, but worry no more!  There is a site you can use to bookmark your favorite resources, categorize them and even SHARE with colleagues!

It’s called delicious and it’s free to sign up for!  Basically, you just go to the site, del.icio.us (it takes a while to type it in correctly because your fingers aren’t used to it, but you’ll get it:)) and sign up for a social bookmarking site.  You can start adding resources immediately and then go to it anytime you find a new one. 

When you add a resource, you create a tag for it (something that you put it under to easily find later: for example, if you find a few resources on multiplying decimals, you can tag them all as multiplying_decimals and that folder will be easily accesible to you). 

After giving it a tag, you can also create a title for it, as well as a mini description.  At the time, the description doesn’t seem so important, but as you post more and more sites into the same tag, the descriptions help you find what you need faster. 

You can also share your delicious site with your colleagues.  Grade level teams could even form their own site specific to their grade level curriculum so resources can be shared faster.  It can promote team collaboration, while putting a focus on using more technology in the classroom.

Here’s an example of my delicious site.  I teach fifth grade, so most of the tags are related to the fifth grade curriuculum.  There are also tags related to resources teachers can use, as well as different sites that have great ideas for use in the computer lab. 

 Anyway you choose to use deliciuos, I bet you will no longer be saying to yourself “what was that site I used last year?”  All you will have to do is head to your very own social bookmarking site and, voila, there it will be!  What an easy way to make your teaching life a little simpler:)

“Wow, what a cool idea for scrapbooking at home.  But how in the WORLD could that fit into the classroom?”

 Yes, I had these same thoughts when I was first introduced to the concept of Photostory.  Well, ponder no more!  Here are some ideas for using Photostory in YOUR classroom!

*  You could take pictures on a field trip and upload them onto the computer.  Students could create an album from Photostory to show off what they learned through the unit and connect it to what they saw on their field trips.  Captions would reflect the pictures represented and the verbal communication could explain it in more detail.

*  You could help students take pictures of things representing math in real life (ex:  angles/lines around a park, decimals around town, geometrical shapes in various houses) to connect what they are learning to how it is used in real life.  Students could work in pairs to create a photostory album on what is seen in each picture and the importance of understanding the math concept itself.

*  You could create a folder of downloaded images (following copyright of course!) pertaining to Social Studies or Science units.  Students could use these photos as an introduction to the unit (previewing and predicting) or a closure to the unit (before a test to show how much they know). 

*  Students could create creative stories (older grades could create them to share with younger buddies).  The stories could incorporate real pictures, pictures created in a different resource or digital photos dowloaded from online.  Obviously, they’d have to go through the editing process and create an outline for their story, but this would be a fun way to provide students with opportunities to express themselves in a new way!

The opportunities are vast for Photostory!  The only struggle would be students who aren’t as practiced with a keyboard or mouse and getting computer lab time (as we all know that’s the biggest struggle of all!).  If you could work past these setbacks, it would be a fabulous way to get those ‘reluctant writers’ a chance to show off their stuff!

Photostory download!

We all have Jonny in our class.  Most of us probably have multiple Jonnys who work together to fabricate excuses against writing down their assignments.  What can we, as eductors, do to help students put their thoughts down on paper?  We can use the computer of course!

 I had the pleasure of working with the program Microsoft Photostory.   Students are able to create stories from real pictures, downloaded images or videos.  Individual students can use the program to choose the pictures they want to use and then crop/edit them.  After editing them, they can create captions for them, which incorporates the written communication.   Do you think students will think twice about getting their thoughts down on a computer screen?  No!

The students can take the storytelling a step further and add music and/or sound clips to it.  This would incorporate verbal communication into the project, which is part of the student’s Language Arts grade!  Student who are more hesitant about speaking in front of people have the option of typing their script onto the page before saying it into the microphone. 

What a fabulous way of incorporating Language Arts into a technological world. 

The best part?  It doesn’t need to be done in a computer lab!  Students could tackle this assignment as a center activity with a buddy if there are 2-3 computers available for use in the classroom!

How to use!

Examples!

There’s a wide variety of ideas in which Wikis can be used across grade levels to provide students with the opportunities to use technology as well as share their ideas with other students.  Imagine the modeling that could go on as far as writing, communication and research are concerned!  It gives students the capability to have control of their own learning and the authority to teach each other in a collaborative effort. 

The following provide examples of Wikis in use by companies and classrooms!

Community Wiki

Meatball Wiki