Last week we pulled off an afternoon of free ed tech workshops for almost 200 educators who teach at my school and at our feeder schools. Thought I'd share how we did it.
For a few years a group of reps from each school have been meeting to align the ISTE NETS to the outcomes we could expect from students in each grade. That became our Digital Literacy Matrix.
From there our fearless leader, Scott Irwin, convinced the local principals that an afternoon of tech PD would be worth giving up their individual site PD and staff meetings etc. We surveyed teachers about what they knew and what they wanted to learn. We used that data to develop course offerings that fit their needs and we began begging teachers in the cluster to present or co-present.
I made up a Google Site to list the offerings and collect registrations from teachers. Being able to embed spreadsheets and link to Google Forms was critical to the success of that effort.
https://sites.google.com/site/plclustertech/
Once we closed registration, Scott used some ninja Word skills to convert my spread sheet of participants to some lovely name tags. We printed their sessions on the name tags to make things easier. We made up a flyer with a map and a list of available sessions, but the ROTC students who stood by in uniform to direct participants really helped people find their way around.
With a few notable hiccups our tech worked. It was inspiring to walk around and see so many teachers learning. The highlight though, was the third and fourth graders who came with their teacher to teach the wiki workshop. The kids taught it. The teacher took pictures. It was great seeing the adults learning from some very sharp and very short educators.
Feedback has been positive and I hope we will be able to do it again.
Total cost: $8.00 for the two boxes of Girl Scout cookies I bought to give to the ROTC students for their help. Well worth it.
For a few years a group of reps from each school have been meeting to align the ISTE NETS to the outcomes we could expect from students in each grade. That became our Digital Literacy Matrix.
From there our fearless leader, Scott Irwin, convinced the local principals that an afternoon of tech PD would be worth giving up their individual site PD and staff meetings etc. We surveyed teachers about what they knew and what they wanted to learn. We used that data to develop course offerings that fit their needs and we began begging teachers in the cluster to present or co-present.
I made up a Google Site to list the offerings and collect registrations from teachers. Being able to embed spreadsheets and link to Google Forms was critical to the success of that effort.
https://sites.google.com/site/plclustertech/
Once we closed registration, Scott used some ninja Word skills to convert my spread sheet of participants to some lovely name tags. We printed their sessions on the name tags to make things easier. We made up a flyer with a map and a list of available sessions, but the ROTC students who stood by in uniform to direct participants really helped people find their way around.
With a few notable hiccups our tech worked. It was inspiring to walk around and see so many teachers learning. The highlight though, was the third and fourth graders who came with their teacher to teach the wiki workshop. The kids taught it. The teacher took pictures. It was great seeing the adults learning from some very sharp and very short educators.
Feedback has been positive and I hope we will be able to do it again.
Total cost: $8.00 for the two boxes of Girl Scout cookies I bought to give to the ROTC students for their help. Well worth it.
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