Establish trusting and respectful coaching relationships that encourage educators to explore new instructional strategies.
Building Virtual Professional Development
LLT 590 Internship
During the summer of 2020, I completed my Internship for my technology specialist certificate. Because of issues with covid-19, the technology department in my own School District was too busy to take on an intern. Instead of doing an internship within my school district, I developed a professional development opportunity for a small private school. It was a small teacher population, and there was not much knowledge amongst them on how to incorporate technology effectively into a classroom.
I could not meet one-on-one with them, so I created the PD to be an online "experience" rather than an all-day PD activity. Working through the process of deciding what and how I would provide PD virtually was a lot like thinking through creating online versions of the classes I teach in school.
Because I had no idea who the people were that I would present to, I started about a month in advance by taking a survey to see what they were most interested in and where their skill-set was as far as technology integration was concerned. I basically created a playlist of activities they could work their way through. I used specific technologies and web 2.0 tools to teach them in professional development to present all of the professional development content. Using the Web 2.0 tools in my own presentation allowed the educators to see how these different technologies could be used.
I also provided opportunities for them to try out each one of the Technologies as a student so they would see what it would look like in a classroom setting if they had assigned activities for their own students then I designed time for them to choose a technology they would like to use and create something they might like to use their own classrooms. The course ran out of a Google Classroom that linked them to all kinds of interactive activities and left them with a resource they could go back to. I also created a list of technologies by category on my blog site.
I was initially disappointed that I could not work within my own school district and could not work face-to-face with educators. However, this opportunity gave me a unique experience in designing professional development that I definitely would not have been able to do had it not been for covid-19. I definitely enjoyed the experience and the challenge of thinking my way through exactly how I needed to present something if I was going to do it remotely. These are valuable skills for the future. I don't know if I will ever leave the classroom, but I certainly enjoyed the design experience of creating this PD.
LLT 590 Internship
During the summer of 2020, I completed my Internship for my technology specialist certificate. Because of issues with covid-19, the technology department in my own School District was too busy to take on an intern. Instead of doing an internship within my school district, I developed a professional development opportunity for a small private school. It was a small teacher population, and there was not much knowledge amongst them on how to incorporate technology effectively into a classroom.
I could not meet one-on-one with them, so I created the PD to be an online "experience" rather than an all-day PD activity. Working through the process of deciding what and how I would provide PD virtually was a lot like thinking through creating online versions of the classes I teach in school.
Because I had no idea who the people were that I would present to, I started about a month in advance by taking a survey to see what they were most interested in and where their skill-set was as far as technology integration was concerned. I basically created a playlist of activities they could work their way through. I used specific technologies and web 2.0 tools to teach them in professional development to present all of the professional development content. Using the Web 2.0 tools in my own presentation allowed the educators to see how these different technologies could be used.
I also provided opportunities for them to try out each one of the Technologies as a student so they would see what it would look like in a classroom setting if they had assigned activities for their own students then I designed time for them to choose a technology they would like to use and create something they might like to use their own classrooms. The course ran out of a Google Classroom that linked them to all kinds of interactive activities and left them with a resource they could go back to. I also created a list of technologies by category on my blog site.
I was initially disappointed that I could not work within my own school district and could not work face-to-face with educators. However, this opportunity gave me a unique experience in designing professional development that I definitely would not have been able to do had it not been for covid-19. I definitely enjoyed the experience and the challenge of thinking my way through exactly how I needed to present something if I was going to do it remotely. These are valuable skills for the future. I don't know if I will ever leave the classroom, but I certainly enjoyed the design experience of creating this PD.