Professional Development Resource for Innovative Educators

Innovative educators are always looking for smart ways to enrich teaching and learning with technology. Those who've been at this for a long time know professional development is the key to success and are ways seeking out great resources. In New York City I spearheaded an initiative to bring together Curriculum integration Teams (CITs) made up of instructional technology specialists and classroom teachers and coaches who were specialists in their respective content area i.e. Literacy, Science, Social Studies, Math, Fitness. Together these teams created professional development aligned to the units of study they were teaching that answered the question, "How can we enrich what we do with technology?" The result was several terrific PD workshops geared toward students in grades 4 – 8, each consisting of eight, 45-60 minute sessions that can be delivered at once in a day, over two days or just as one session per day (perhaps during a prep period or afterschool).

All materials are available to educators free of charge at http://21cpd.wikispaces.com/. Here is some of what you will find:

Celebrating Student Work with a Virtual Science Fair
In Celebrating Student Work with a Virtual Science Fair participants discover how wikis, online rubrics, electronic science notebooks and other technology tools can enhance the students’ ability to share, comment to, and reflect on science experiments virtually. Upon completion of this class, participants will be able to go back to the classroom and conduct a virtual science fair.

Enrich the Study of American Revolution with Digital Documentaries
Discover how to enrich social studies instruction with digital documentaries using the American Revolution as a sample unit of study. In this class participants investigate key individuals from that period in history and present their contributions in a digital documentary requiring students to use the research process, storyboard, include narration, and credit their work appropriately.

Utilizing Smartboards to Enrich Literacy Instruction
SmartBoards have been proven to be effective teaching and learning tools in the classroom for reaching all students with multiple learning styles. This four session course will focus on training the ELA teacher to: · understand the tools and advanced functions to fully utilize the Smartboard in the classroom · locate and examine existing SmartBoard ELA lessons · build a library of existing SmartBoard lessons · create a SmartBoard lesson specifically designed to address their students’ academic needs.

Celebrating Student Math Work with Digital Data Displays
In Celebrating Student Math Work with Digital Data Displays participants discover how to use technology to enhance the learner's ability to collect, organize, display and analyze data. Upon completion of this class, participants will have the resources to use technology to publish student work.

Creating An Online Wellness Community: Managing Resources Effectively In Enriching the Promotion of Fitness & Health Programs with Technology participants develop a wiki to create an on-line forum to improve coordination of community health resources for students, parents, school staff members and other community members. Participants will then have the opportunity to develop a presentation to promote their online wellness community as well as their physical education program.

Project-based Learning and Exit Project Writing in the 21st Century
English Language Arts teachers will discover how to support their students in using technology to enhance the writing component of exit projects and project based learning. Participants explore the stages of the writing process and learn how digital graphic organizers, wikis, blogs, advanced word processing features and more can support collecting ideas and selecting topics to capture in an electronic writer’s notebook. Participants learn to use these tools to to foster writing and research skills, and in the development of critical thinking skills and language arts skills. The class culminates with participants celebrating writing using a collaborative online tool to publish their work.

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I invite you to use these materials with your teachers and share what you find here or on the discussion tabs at http://21CPD.wikispaces.com.