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Sometimes Educators Just Need To Hear It From Someone Else…
Have you ever said to yourself, “But that is what I have been trying to tell/show you all along?”
I know in our roles we take great pride for training our staff to use technology in the classroom. But humility goes a long way…
It takes a little humility to accept that sometimes educators have to hear the message from someone/something else in order for self-actualization to occur. No matter how often and clearly you convey your evangelism on technology integration, some people are just not prepared (for whatever reason) to transform your message into action. They may understand you conceptually, but operationalizing your message is another story. While you continue to repeat and model your message in differentiated ways, sometimes the answer is to bring someone/something else to get your message through.
So don’t get mad, jealous, or annoyed, try to stay focused on your mission of evolving classrooms into 21st century learning environments. In fact, rejoice that certain staff members have embraced the change, even though it may have not come from you that particular day. Although the light bulb didn’t directly come from you that day (which can be a pride thing), the determined evangelism from you enabled them to reach that tipping point.
*Definitely the lesson I learned over the years…and I am still continuing to learn. Pride can be a tough one to overcome.
EdTech Professional Development Resources
- K12 Opensource
- Teacher Tools
- Partnership for 21st Century Skills
- Teachers’ Use of EdTech in U.S. 2009
- Cybraryman Internet Catalogue
- 100 Useful, Free Web Tools for Lifelong Learning
- Fueling Teachers to go High Tech
- Skype An Author
- Learning Beyond the Walls Using Skype
- Ultimate Teachers Guide to Social Media
- Making Stories Digital Using Voicethread
- Ten Commandments for Teachers on the Web
- Emerging Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010
- 100 Reasons why you should use blogs
- 25 Features of Outstanding ICT Lessons
- Advice for beginning tech coordinators
- The Complete Guide for Project-Based Learning
Professional Development Opportunities
- http://learner.org/
- http://guide2digitallearning.com/
- http://dww.ed.gov/
- http://ies.ed.gov/
- http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/
- http://internet4classrooms.com/
- MetLife Survey of the American Teacher
- http://pdo.ascd.org
- http://learningcenter.nsta.org/
- http://www.loc.gov/teachers/
- http://plagiarism.org/
- ASCD Free Webinars
- K12 Mobile Learning
- 37 Best Free Ebooks Sites
- The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book
- Reach
- Edmodo Presentation
- Teaching Ideas Web
- Web Tools Applied to Teaching
- Teacher Bootcamp Ebook Resources
- Guide to Your Best Year Teaching
- Windows 7 Guide
- The Teen Survival Guide
- The Big Deal Book
- Ultimate Twitter Guidebook
- Open Content Alliance
Questions About Technology Professional Development Programs
As I continue to evolve my technology professional development programs, I am interested to know how others implement it at their sites. These are the questions that I have been contemplating and excited to hear how you do it? If you have an answer even for one of the questions, I would really appreciate it. Thank you for helping me grow! Your comments are appreciated and valued. Hopefully we will have enough responses to share with others in the PLN. Feel free to comment or @socratech on Twitter.
1. How do you assess your overall technology professional development program success?
2. How do you assess your teachers in their edtech growth? Do you hold them accountable on any level?
3. Do you incorporate any Information Technology/troubleshooting training?
4. How often do you meet?
5. Do you provide any credits or extrinsic motivation for participating in tech professional development?
6. Any other tips or strategies to a successful program.
How to create a private PD session on Twitter?
I have been wanting to use the power and simplicity of Twitter for a professional development session with my teachers. However, I also want to keep the session private and unique to our site without the rest of my PLN jumping in on the conversation. I explored hashtags and using other programs like Edmodo. Then I stumbled upon a web app called GroupTweet, which allows you to create a private conversation on Twitter without broadcasting to the rest of your PLN. In order to create a private conversation, you will need to create a new separate account dedicated to the private conversation. For example, I created an account named after my professional development group at my school. This is the account you register with GroupTweet for all conversations to take place. Once the account has been registered, the teacher must follow and be followed by the new Twitter group account. After the initial setup, teachers can now start conversing by sending Direct Messages (DM’s) to the new group account. The group account in return will then broadcast the message to you via @account (i.e. via @socratech) and to everyone else in the group. It is also important to protect the tweets from the group account if you want to maintain the privacy. It may not be the ideal configuration, but it does provide a solution for conversations catered to your particular site of teachers.
TEKA Podcasts
It always brings pride to me when my students produce great work using technology. Equally rewarding is when my teachers learn to use technology and integrate it into their lessons and curriculum. My TEKA program (Technology Education at KIPP Adelante) is a year round technology professional development created to help teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. The first projects in this year’s program was to produce podcasts for their classroom. I am very excited to share some of the wonderful projects produced by my teachers. Great work!
