I can't believe the back to school season is beginning already. Next week, I have my first back to school meeting with all of the building technology specialists. We are hoping to come away from the meeting with a concrete plan as to how we are going to encourage and train teachers to use technology in their classrooms. We do not want teachers to use technology just for the sake of using technology. It should be used in ways that will benefit students and improve the learning experience. One thing we really want to focus on is creating meaningful professional development for our teachers. What are some of the best PD opportunities you have had and what made them so great?
Monday, July 31, 2017
Back to School Meetings
I can't believe the back to school season is beginning already. Next week, I have my first back to school meeting with all of the building technology specialists. We are hoping to come away from the meeting with a concrete plan as to how we are going to encourage and train teachers to use technology in their classrooms. We do not want teachers to use technology just for the sake of using technology. It should be used in ways that will benefit students and improve the learning experience. One thing we really want to focus on is creating meaningful professional development for our teachers. What are some of the best PD opportunities you have had and what made them so great?
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My favorite type of professional development is one where I have options and choices. Many of the edtech conferences that I attend through CUE (Computer Using Educators) in California there are a variety of sessions to attend so I can choose where I want to go based on my interests and needs. What are your favorites?
ReplyDeleteOptions are definitely great when it comes to PD. My favorites are when I get to learn a new tool that will be useful in my classroom, and I get time to play around with it. I love having time right then and there to test things out and think about how I might use it. Otherwise, I often move on and forget all about it or just don't find the time to work with it as much as I'd like to.
DeleteI've had to think long and hard before some PD opportunities that I enjoyed came to mind. Back to school meetings are notoriously boring, I'm sure in large part because all of us would still rather be summering! I think it's great that you're being intentional about your PD planning.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite PD opportunities didn't have anything to do with technology, but I think the principles can be applied. The instructor did a lot of things right, including pacing, student participation and applicable ideas.
Pacing: from the moment we walked in the door until we left her classroom, the teacher had us on the go. She would often end an activity before everyone had a chance to complete it leaving little to no dead time.
Student participation: the teacher had us, as students, engaged the whole time. Whether we were sharing ideas or experiences with a partner, working at our desk on our own, sharing out to the group or reading aloud, we were constantly engaged. We were working just as hard as the teacher was.
Applicable ideas: the topic of our class was, ironically, student participation. By the time we left her class not only had we written down lots of ideas to implement in our classroom but we had participated in them ourselves and seen them in action. I applied a lot of those techniques in my classroom that year. It was a great lesson to me on effective teaching!
Good luck developing successful and engaging sessions!!
I agree that back to school meetings can be tough to sit through! As a presenter, I don't want to bore everyone!! Thanks for sharing. I think getting the audience engaged is one of the best things to do for any meeting or presentation.
DeleteMy husband constantly complains about PD. For me, though, I would welcome all the PD opportunities I could get. I work in a library with one other librarian. He is great and we really work well as a team, but it would be nice to add a couple more minds to the mix sometimes. I think it's funny that you mentioned that you hope to come away with a plan to encourage teachers to use more technology in the classroom to support the learning process. We are trying to get our faculty on campus to do the same thing. Have a great and productive school year!
ReplyDeleteI love that you have a great attitude about PD. We definitely need more people like you! :)
DeleteI accepted a new position this year, but in my previous position I was the building representative (trainer/coach) for the new LMS my district started implementing over the last two years. For an elementary teacher audience it was particularly challenging to find the "what's in it for them" hook when developing professional development classes. I appreciate your focus making sure that training is relevant for the teachers, just as with our students, it needs to be relevant and applicable, or what is the point?
ReplyDeleteIt is really tough to design PD that is relevant to everyone in a diverse audience. I am really hoping that at times throughout the year, we can break apart into departments or something and tailor the PD for each group. We will see!
DeleteIn my district we have been following this model for the technology professional development sessions. All of the instructional leads, admins and the technology coordinators for each building get to meet in a different location and come up with a plan and action steps for each quarter. Then we all pick different sessions to attend to and when we get back from our 2-3 sessions we debrief and decide what trainings are worth bringing to our school. At the next meeting we will assess how we have done the previous quarter and try again.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great way to collaborate! Thanks for sharing.
DeleteI always love to learn by doing, especially when it comes to learning new technology tools. When I attend conferences, I love to go to playgrounds and workshops rather than just lectures. I think teachers are tired of being "talked at" and prefer to learn the same way they are encouraged to teach their students. It was always so funny to me that I would leave my classroom, where we were tasked to teach kids in an child-centered, engaging, hands on, minds on, inquiry based learning environment, just to spend our own time as learning sitting in a chair for an hour and half listening.
ReplyDeleteSo when I was an educational technologist, I tried to make everything a workshop! I would create video tutorials for the tools I wanted to share and would make our technology meetings workshops. I would create challenges and task sheets for the teachers to really immerse them in the process.
Here is a link to an example...
http://www.teachingjake.com/tech-infused-writers-workshop.html
Just some ideas from my own personal experience. What is the technology environment of your school and district?
Thank you so much for sharing, especially the link. Your workshop looks amazing. I want to attend!! I love the idea of creating challenges and other activities for teachers to complete. It is much better than only engaging them through discussion and/or polling questions.
ReplyDeleteI will be working mostly with the two middle schools and the high school in our district. The two middle schools each have several classroom sets of iPads, but a few of them are getting outdated enough to where they can no longer be updated. The high school is working on a 1:1 initiative by giving the incoming freshman each a laptop they can use for their four years of high school. This will be our second year, so both freshman and sophomores will have devices. There are also several classroom sets of devices including, Chromebooks, iPads, Macbooks, and a few desktop computer labs. The district is really supportive of technology and is working hard to get every school to 1:1. Now it is more a matter of getting teachers to use the devices the district has already spent money on.