Blended Professional Development
#edtech #edchat #elearning
I write this post as I am stuck in the airport. Actually, I am only 45 miles from my home here in Northern Colorado, but I am trying to fly to Seattle this evening to do some blended professional development tomorrow with the Northshore school district. My flight got delayed nearly three hours, so here I sit.
In the past I have called it Blended Learning, but that term is being used so much with regards to teaching young students, that I prefer the term “Blended Professional Development.”
Anyone who has been in education for longer than a month knows about “PD.” It is what us teachers do to get better — or to get tortured — depending on how you approach it. By adding the word “blended” to the front of it I believe it gets much better.
Image via Wikipedia
The course I am teaching in Seattle (if I can make it there) is all about integrating 21st Century Skills into lessons and it is being offered by my pals over at Atomic Learning. Two weeks ago the teachers in Seattle got their assignment and access to the online component of the course. The teachers have been learning from these online lessons and when we get together tomorrow we will all be on the same page, which means we can get right down to work without having to spend a lot of time on instruction. This is so much better that the “old” way of doing PD.
Gotta go… I think I might be finally boarding.
New Podcast Episode: Bribing Teachers to Teach with Tech
#edtech #edchat #elemchat
I just uploaded a new episode of The Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
Episode Number 11 for the week of March 28, 2011 (This week’s episode was recorded and edited on an iPad 2 using Garageband.)
“Bribing Teachers to Teach with Tech.”
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
When Technology Bites Back
#edtech #edchat #elearning #elemchat
So this morning I was presenting a webinar for Atomic Learning about technology integration secrets for administrators, things were going great. My ideas were flowing, my slides were looking great, I was the top of my game.
I checked the little scale that tells me how many of my participants are paying attention (meaning, my webinar is the top window on their computer) and I was at 97%. This means these hundreds of administrators were really watching my webinar and not off checking their emails.
Then it happened…
I’m about half way through, and I go to ask my third poll question, I like to poll the participants because it keeps them involved, when things suddenly went wrong. I’m still yakking away, when I notice that nothing is happening. Everything is frozen. I wait a few seconds – nothing.
I panic. I’m now trying every trick in the book – still nothing.
I know what I need to do next, but it is going to kill my webinar. I reach down and restart my computer.
Seven minutes later I reconnect with my webinar and see that only 9 people stayed. I put on a good face and finish the webinar.
So how could I have fixed it?
Preparation, that’s how. I know better than this. Technology will always have little hiccups.
Number one rule with technology: Always have a plan B!
I tell teachers this all the time… If the projector won’t turn on, have your students practice keyboarding for a few minutes while you figure it out. If your students can’t save to the server, have them save it on your teacher’s thumb drive.
When I do the same webinar tomorrow I will tell my participants all about plan “B.” I made a note on my first slide to warn my participants that if I ever drop off, they should stay connected, go get a coffee, and wait for me to return.
Technology plus and little patience equals a better chance at success.
Blended Learning is the Best of Both Worlds
#edtech #edchat #elemchat
This past week I started to facilitate another blended learning course about integrating 21st Century Skills into the classroom. Blended learning, if you don’t already know, is a little online instruction mixed with a little offline (or traditional) instruction.
Let me explain a little bit about how the course I am facilitating works…
Participants, which in this case are teachers from a district in Washington State, sign up for the course which has a specific start date. They get a welcome email and a “kick-off” conference call to let everyone know that the course has begun. Then the participants are on their own for the first part to gain the background knowledge for the course.
In this case, they are learning about 21st Century Skills. There is some reading, some video to watch on YouTube and some tutorials to watch on Atomic Learning. During each part of the course the participants use a cycle of Learn – Do – Share.
Learn – they learn a new concept like what a Personal Learning Network is.
Do – they set up a Twitter account and find 10 people to follow.
Share – they then share things that they have learned in the course forum so that other participant can learn from what they have done.
Image by arvindgrover via Flickr
Two weeks after the course begins, I come to the school in person to meet with the participants face to face. We talk about the things that they have learned and then put them into practice. This is more like a traditional workshop except for one big advantage – all of us are on the same page because of the work that has been done in the previous two weeks.
The course concludes with a little homework where they get to apply in their classroom what they have learned in the course.
To me and my students (teachers) blended learning truly is the best of both worlds.
New Podcast Episode: Building Your PLN
#edtech #edchat #elemchat
I just uploaded a new episode of The Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
Episode Number 10 for the week of March 21, 2011 (This week’s episode was recorded and edited on an iPad 2 using Garageband.)
“Building your PLN is as easy as 10-5-2.”
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
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