Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Professional Development Piece

www.embeddedlearningacademy.com/pde/21

Affliliated with Wilkes?
Learning Sciences International

Building principals required to take 30 hour 1st course.
Attend Introduction training session 10/7

1st Course is Teaching in the 21st Century - the Need for Change

Each course can be taken for graduate credit
same timeline
same content
different facilitator
$1035 per course.
90 Act48 hours
can be applied toward Masters program at Wilkes

Questions:
Q Can coaches take courses for college credit?
A Yes

Q Since the college credit courses are facilitated by someone else, how can we include these teachers in our group disussions, etc.
A we can set up blended discussion groups

Coaches can take and facilliate a course.

Problem Based Learning

Not the same as creating projects -built on real-life problem -real audience for 'product' Begin with the end in mind.
Six A's -
Authenticity Academic Rigor Applied Learning Active Exploration Adult Connections Assessment Practices Example - math teacher, Google SketchUp to design swimming pool in new building construction Craft the Driving Question (how is math involved in construction? importance of being part of a team) Plan Assessment (individual project - spreadsheet involving costs, culminating project - SketchUp project presentation, artifacts - journaling) Mapping the Project (discuss final product, architect, measuring footprint, how to do pricing, etc. - each step has rubric and deadlines) Manage the Process
daily tasks and deadlines, keep focused...

Not really novel ideas.

Another example:
Poetry - find poems, listen to podcast/audio file, published written poems, compiled poems and published via lulu.

Google Tools

Amazing.
Google Docs - spreadsheet, docs, presentations
Google Earth
Google Teacher Academy
Sketch Up
Presenter
sanaya@colonialsd.org

Blogging, Blogging, everwhere

So this must be my ..... 5th blog? Seems like this may be a good place to ramble about cross function things. I have my quilting blog, I have my district ITS blog, I have my Moodle blogs, this is my everything else blog.