Live Virtual Professional Development

I really enjoyed doing both the webinars and the Twitter chats. I can definitely see after doing these how professional development could move more towards the direction of being online. It allows for teachers to choose what they find interesting and what will benefit them and their students the most. I could also see a lot of differences between the two after completing them. The Twitter chats really were what you took from them. I found myself starting out mostly just responding to the questions and watching my tweet deck move so quickly with all the responses. As I got closer to doing my four I found myself adding a couple responses to questions, following others who were posting things I found interesting, liking others tweets, retweeting others tweets, and responding or having conversations about things others said. I found that through the twitter chats it could be a reflective experience which teachers need. This way they could think through their experiences of teaching and share triumphs and how to handle things. I also found it a great place to find resources and get connected with other teachers who share things you are interested in. As I will share below there were many things I heard about through the Twitter chats that I am interested in looking into and hopefully beginning to implement into my classroom next year.

The webinars I found to be less interactive, but I also felt they could be more immediately useful. All of the ones I participated in did have some form of chat, but I found a lot of the chat to be people introducing themselves, saying that they liked something the presenter said, and then saying thank you at the end. There were some questions in between as well. I feel these were close to typical professional development, but what I would like about these is that the teacher could choose which webinar could most benefit their teaching. I found it very helpful that the speaker could show step by step how to use certain tools or explain in depth different resources. I found the webinars to be much more specific topics where the twitter chats were broader.

Below I will give a brief summary of each twitter chat and webinar and give a few things I took away from each. Then at the bottom I have included a Google slides presentation that shows my involvement in each.

Twitter Live Chats

#satchat - 7:30am June 17^th
My first Twitter chat was #satchat which is a twitter chat that occurs every Saturday morning early at 7:30am. The moderator for this chat was Scott Rocco (@scottrrocco). The goal of #satchat is for school leaders and administrators, but educators contributed as well. This specific chat focused on “Leading in the Google Era.” It was very interesting to me to hear about some of the Google resources and how they are being used in different schools and districts. This summer I will be becoming Google certified so I found it very relevant. I also felt encouraged to use Google classroom this year. As well as, many teachers mentioned using Google forms and having students collaborate to create Google slides which could be useful as well.

#plearnchat 7:00 pm June 19^th
The second Twitter chat that I attended was #plearnchat. This chat was put on by Barbara Bray (@bbray27) and Jackie Gerstein (@jackiegerstein) on “The Design Thinking Process and Universal Design for Learning.” They would be presenting on the topic at ISTE 2017. This chat was a bit slower. One common theme among the questions was turning our classrooms into makerspaces and what we would need or need to do to make this happen. An important concept with this was remembering that the classroom needs to be student-centered. A few ways that were discussed to help make this happen is to have students come up with classroom norms, having students get involved in sharing what worked and didn’t work, and unconventional seating. Changing the seating in my classroom is one thing I definitely want to try. Someone said that if someone were to walk in your room there shouldn’t be any indication where the front of the classroom is. Teaching in a small high school classroom there isn’t a ton of space to add much flexible seating, but I hope to change the seats into groups at least and maybe get a few flexible seat options.

#edtechchat 8:00 pm June 19^th
The third Twitter chat that I attended was #edtechchat. This one was moderated by Thomas Murray (@thomascmurray) on “Learning Transformed: How Can Technology Support the Transformation?” Much of this chat focused on changing the learning experience including how technology can help to do this. An important concept I took from this one was allowing students to have a voice. One way this could be done was by allowing students to create their learning spaces through their seating. Another important thing I took from this was that we personalize our teaching for our students and that really professional development for teachers should be personalized in the same way. If professional development were to move more towards the Internet I could definitely see this as being more possible. A few games for technology in education that I am interested in looking into after this chat are classdojo, dragonbox, mincraftedu, and softschools.

#tlap 9:00 pm July 3^rd
The fourth Twitter chat was #tlap which stands for Teach Like a Pirate. This one confused me a bit as teaching like a pirate isn’t quite what I am interested in, but it instead draws creative educators to share and improve their teaching. This chat was moderated by Ramsey Musallam (@ramusallam). He gave the following Ted Talk which on its own is very inspiring:

In his Ted talk one of the things he stresses is “embracing the mess” which was also the topic of one of his questions. Since it is hard for me to feel like I am giving up control, this is one thing I definitely was interested to hear some feedback on. Many stressed that it is important to set expectations and routines from the beginning. During this chat someone posted about always being willing to offer extra credit when students ask for it which caused us to have a mini conversation during the chat. This is something I don’t tend to do. This teacher argued that if students are willing to use their spare time to learn more about what we are learning in class it is better than any lesson. That felt quite compelling to me and I definitely may be open to giving more in the future. Some different resources I would like to look more into after this chat are fipgrid, #games4ed, @recapthat, @seesaw, and breakoutedu.

Webinars

Creating a Culture of Dignity in Your Community: Transforming Difficult Conversations into Meaningful Connections with Your Students on June 14^th 2:00-3:00 pm

http://home.edweb.net/webinar/creating-culture-dignity-community/

This was the first webinar that I have ever attended and I feel it set a precedence for me of what I expected the others to be like. It was put on by edweb.net and the speaker was Rosalind Wiseman. I found it to be quite engaging. The chat on the sidebar had a lot of people talking and the speaker seemed to be involved in the conversation as she answered questions that were asked on the chat as they were asked. She also built in polls for us to answer as she was speaking. This was probably the best put on webinar that I attended. The webinar seemed to be centered on social media and how to talk to students about social media. She explained that we don’t get to decide what is meaningful to a student so that it is important to recognize the things that are important to them. We also cannot be fear-based and afraid to talk about social media with students. A good take away for me was when she talked about if I student comes and wants to talk about something and says, “Please don’t tell anyone else.” She stated it is important to say something along the lines of “I can’t promise that I won’t, but if I do need to go to another adult we can talk together about the way to do that and what would be the most comfortable for you.” I found this to be a great way to comfort the student but also not lose their trust.

Ethics and Communication Challenges Facing School Leaders on June 15^th 3:00-4:00 pm

http://home.edweb.net/webinar/ethics-leadership-todays-communications-challenges/

This webinar was put on by edweb.net but the speaker was Julie Thannum an Assistant Superintendent for Board and Community Relations in Carroll ISD, Southlake, Texas. This was my second webinar and after the first one I had mental expectations of what a webinar would be like and this one didn’t quite match up. The sidebar chat for this webinar didn’t have quite as much involvement. Also, the speaker didn’t really involve the audience by answering any questions in the sidebar or including any polls. She also planned on answering questions at the end, but spoke through the entire hour so she did not have any time. The audience it also seemed to be more tailored for was school administration which I hadn’t realized before I took part. Since it was on ethics one take away that I had was that the speaker said to understand the laws and Ethical Code of Conduct that we are to follow whether that be from the state or district. Another important piece that she did direct at administrators is the importance of being consistent. She stated that if someone does something wrong she finds it to be a compliment when the educator already knows what the consequence will be. I feel this is something that is important as a teacher as well for students to understand and expect the consequences before they arrive.

Hacking Project Based Learning on June 15^th 4:00-4:30 pm

http://all4ed.org/webinar-event/jun-15-17/

This was my third webinar I attended put on by all4ed.org and the panel consisted of Ross Cooper, Erin Murphy, and Tom Murray. For this one the sidebar chat on YouTube didn’t really seem to be used. There was some activity on Twitter using the hashtags #FutureReady and #HackingPBL. You could also submit questions prior to the webinar to be answered by the panel. I really enjoyed this webinar and found it quite useful. Project based learning (PBL) is something that I really want to try to integrate in my classroom, but have been apprehensive to really try. One thing that was talked about was to find something that works for you, it doesn’t have to be something that is a grand idea or where students are going save the world. It was said that if we do that both us and students will get burned out. They also discussed that there is still a place for direct instruction in PBL. The direct instruction should come not in the beginning, but later just as students need the information and it should be broken up with experimenting. Another piece that they discussed was how to assign grades for the PBL. They created a progress assessment tool which they say is described in their book, Hacking Project Based Learning, which I am interested in getting and reading. I was encouraged to hear them explain that many teachers are already doing pieces of PBL, but just need to continue moving in that direction a step at a time. I am definitely encouraged by this webinar to do just that!

Motivating and Engaging Students: Stride and the Role of Games in the Classroom on June 20^th 3:30-4:30 pm

My fourth webinar I attended I actually came across because it was emailed to me at my teacher email. It had a chat window, but the chat only went to the moderator. Our school will be going 1:1 in two years and I was intrigued by the titled of the role of games in the classroom. Our school currently has a subscription for USATestPrep but with the changing standards my colleagues and I have been less impressed over the last couple years. The webinar was essentially a sales pitch for their program called “Stride.” It was explained as only being useful for through 8^th grade. Although I teach high school I teach the lowest level math so I figured the program could still possibly be useful. It seemed like a great program with a lot of resources. It uses adaptive technology meaning that it identifies where skill gaps are that need to be filled in and meets the students at the level they are at. A neat feature is the inclusion of a reward through coins. Students earn coins based on how they do and can trade these in to play games as a brain break or the teacher can input in rewards such as candy or pencils that they would give for a certain amount of coins. Another aspect that was interesting is that the student does not know what level they are performing at, but the teacher does on their dashboard. The teacher dashboard looked very good for progress monitoring. It was not meant to be the lessons for the students, but instead a supplemental material which is exactly what we are looking for. After the webinar I was contacted by someone from the company who explained that this Stride program may not be the best for our needs, but he did send me a demo for one that is similar and would be better. Seemed by watching the webinar I made a good connection.