For those of you who offer professional development classes for teachers in your district you know how frustrating it can be when nobody shows up for a training or when people show up but are not really paying attention.The unfortunate piece in conducting teacher training is that they almost always have to happen before or after school.Before school leaves little time to learn and practice new skills.Teachers are understandably preoccupied with thinking about their class that will start in 30 minutes.After school training is not much better.During this time teachers are usually dead dog tired or would like to be attending to the commitments of their personal lives rather than listening to you talk about the latest tech tool.
However this year I think I tackled this professional development dilemma and succeeded in delivering quality professional development to a sizeable number of teachers.This year I taught 23 technology classes and had almost 100 people attend each one of those classes.Impossible you say? I would have thought the same nine months ago but with a little help from Moodle it did happen.
Teachers have lives too and we cannot expect them to devote 24/7 to school matters. My wife is a teacher so I know this first hand.Personal lives, family, and other “stuff” just get in the way.For me to expect teachers to regularly attend weekly after school trainings is not realistic.So instead of asking teachers to modify their schedule for me I modified my delivery and schedule for them. I created 23 lessons using Moodle as the tool.And with a little hype, a little cheerleading, some cool incentive prizes, and with some key building supporters I was able to have 90+ teachers finish all 23 activities.
The name of my project was 23 Things. I borrowed the name, the idea, and the Web 2.0 theme for all the lessons from PLCMC Learning 2.0 program.I decided to use Moodle as the delivery mechanism rather than a blog or wiki because it allowed for a controlled online environment and also allowed me to track who was working and who wasn’t.A new “thing” was presented each week followed by a simple assignment or discussion question. Sometimes it took 5 minutes to complete, sometimes half an hour. Some teachers worked independently, some worked in groups.After school, weekends, prep times – teachers worked when they wanted to work.They weren’t tied to any specific date, time, or place.They could even take a break from 23 Things and get caught up when they wanted.The only time limit was that they had to finish by June 6th to be eligible for a prize.According to my Google form that is tracking participants there are 90+ people who have finished – awesome!
What’s Next?
Next time I do 23 Things, or something similar, it will be more structured.I would focus more on a particular theme like digital storytelling or the new NETS for teachers. I will be the first to admit that at times I had no idea what I was doing during 23 Things.Because Web 2.0 was such a broad topic it occasionally felt random.However, when I think about it that was ok.This was my first attempt at online learning so it was a learning experience for me as much as it was for the teachers.Besides teachers just needed some time to explore and have fun.
But no matter what the topic or focus I think the success of 23 Things demonstrates the power and effectiveness of offering professional development online. If I had hosted 23 Things as an after school class I would never have had almost 100 people attend each one of those classes.But by putting the classes online I did just that – 23 classes, 90+ people attending each class – it just didn’t happen at 3:30 every Thursday.
This a cool little program that allows users to create a timeline and display it in many different ways – regular timeline view, list view, flipbook or map. Here is a timeline I found for the show LOST.
I came across this wiki awhile ago and thought this was a great idea for teachers to share their ideas, lessons and strategies for the world to see. I have been checking back now and again but have not seen a whole lot of activity. I am hoping that this site will get some advertisement in San Antonio and that teachers will start adding to it. Which brings me to my plea, in order for web 2.0 technologies to work we need to give and receive not just receive. Pay it forward and add to this wiki.
Do cell phones have a place in schools? Can they help build 21st Century learning skills? I can remember a few years ago worrying about cell phones in the school. How as a principal could I control their use? I quickly realized I could not completely control their use. Because guess what, almost every kid has one and if they do not have one now they will have one very soon. So what do we do as teachers? Do we waste our time trying to police them or do we figure out ways to use them in useful ways to promote teaching and learning? Now I am not advocating kids being on their phones during class time but this is a technology I don’t think we are not currently utilizing to support instruction. Can it be used? I recently brought up the topic of cell phone to the Hartman staff. At the time I was just talking off the top of my head and no ideas or tangible thoughts on the subject. But one of the today’s presentations at the k12 Online Conference talks about cell phones in the schools.
Question – As a high school teacher is this a technology that you should look into accessing to communicate with your students and parents? I do not have the answer to that. But at least I think it is something to investigate and consider.
I’ve been doing some surfing around on the web looking at resources for digital storytelling and came across three useful tools that teachers can use and kids can use: Voicethread, Digital Storyteller, and Scratch. I am sure there are many more, MS Photostory being one. But no matter which is used I find the art of digital storytelling very appealing in the classroom and a process that supports, encourages, and teaches 21st Century skills. Each of the sites above offer a different flavor to their digital storytelling method, approach, and service. I was particularly intrigued by Voicethread because it seems very easy to use and is kind of like a audio blog to elicit comments from readers.
RSS – Real Simple Syndication – is way cool. The web is huge and there is soooo much out there how can you read it all? The anwer is RSS. What this handy dandy feature does is bring the web to you in very simple, short, concise portions. Let’s say you have ten websites you like to visit. Going to those websites on a regular basis takes up a lot of time and energy and sometimes the stories on them are not worth your efforts. With RSS you can subscribe to a website and then recent postings are sent out to you along with a short description of them. This allows you to visit the sites you want and read what interests you most – think of it as kind of sneak peak to a website. I use iGoogle as my home page and as my RSS reader but there are other ways to gather and read RSS feeds. Visit http://www.edutopia.org/tech-teacher-RSS to learn more about RSS and/or watch this video:
