Science Content Day

[Glen Westbroek]

Today my district had a professional development day focused on content areas. We had 120 science teachers at my building. They really enjoyed the opportunities provided. In the morning, we had an opening session followed by three breakout sessions. Teachers selected three sessions to attend. The choices were:

• Creating Class Web Pages
• Designing Online Surveys
• Digital Lab Reports
• Emergency Lesson Plans
• Google Docs for collaboration
• Interactive Web Sites
• Moodle in the Classroom
• Skype
• The Wii Multimedia Whiteboard
• Using Vernier Probes
• Wimba

Teachers from each school selected their three sessions (most schools decided what sessions each would attend so they caught every topic.) Presenters did not provide handouts, but showed how each tool is used and discussed the opportunities these tools provide for teachers to collaborate. Discussions also occurred around how the tools could be used with students.


After our lunch break, teachers came back together and collaborated as school department groups. Each group was asked to discuss how they can apply what was learned in the morning. Department teams focused on what can be used to collaborate as a department, how to use the information with students, and/or how individual teachers can collaborate with someone who teaches the same subject at a different school.


The highlight of my day happened when a visiting principal said he had taken detailed notes today and was going to share everything he learned with ALL the departments at his school. He thanked me for allowing him to observe and learn with his science teachers today.


What kind of Content Professional Development opportunities are available in your districts and schools?

[Chris Ludwig]

Sounds like a great day for science education in your district! All of the sessions look like they were interesting and relevant, something that we don't always see in teacher PD. As for what is available in my district, I mostly get my PD from online resources such as you, Glen, and everyone else I follow on Twitter and elsewhere. My little school district doesn't do much in the way of science PD so we have to create our own. Thanks for sharing what you are up to!

[Glen Westbroek]

Chris,

I'm glad that I am able to help you via TheSynapse and Twitter. We had several professional development days cut in the budget this year. I was thrilled to not lose our content day. The committee who assisted me in the planning did a great job of suggesting sessions.

I am so excited that PD is available online via social networking like Twitter and The Synapse. Let me know if/how I can continue to help you and others.

[Colin Matheson]

This is a great PD event. I help organize something similar in our district. Each year a teacher sets out a technology goal and then we collect all of the teacher goals and look for the big areas of interest. Then we offer a select of morning sessions based on those interests which teachers choose from and then open up the afternoon for practice/work/application time.

I would love to hear more about how you use any of the above tools.

[Mary J. Berger]

I have a few sites that you may like to use to engage students in learning how to use the computer as a learning tool. I have more biology sites and I am working on gathering more chemistry sites that are interactive
MJBerger

[Mary J. Berger]

Sorry for such a late response but this is the first time that I have had to think about how, what, and when

[Karl Pointer]

It seems that every district is making the push for 21st centeruy learning. This year our district has made a concerted effort to expose teachers to new ideas. We have several teachers on campus that are more advanced then others. This past week we had a one day PD where we had several options to choose from. Web 2.0, Ning, google docs, diigo, and others. Watching many of the teachers you could see fear and confusion in their eyes as these ideas were being presented. I think for many it was information overload. The next day our district brought in Alan November to present to the district. We had over 200 hundred teachers in our auditorium on laptops and unfortunately we learned about the weakness of our wireless network. It will be interesting to track how the teachers begin to implement this ideas into their lessons and teachings.

[Glen Westbroek]

Karl,

I can so empathize with the Wireless overload:) I've see that happen way too many times - best observations have been at technology oriented activities like yours. I hope you see good results from teacher implementation of what they learned. At least they were invited to select from several options - I see that as a positive direction.