TPSE Summer Professional Development
The week of July 10 - 14 saw teachers from Winnisquam Regional Middle School, the Paul School, the Armand Dupont School and the Villa Augustina School take advantage of the chance to work with Jim Moulton and their colleagues to enhance an exisiting lesson through the integration of technology.
Tools featured and grabbed hold of by these teachers included, among others, these web-based resources:
Many thanks to Wendi for setting up this training opportunity and keeping everyone so well fed and hydrated, and to the teachers who came out to take advantage.
Tools featured and grabbed hold of by these teachers included, among others, these web-based resources:
- ClassBlogMeister is a free blogging tool made available by David Warlick that supports blogging in a school environment. An entire day was devoted to learning how and why this tool can transform a classroom, and the teachers who are going to give it a try this year deserve our support and should expect interest in how it goes.
- ReadWriteThink.org is a collection of lesson plans and tools that are highly interactive and directly support language arts work across the curriculum. Folks found lots of stuff to use here.
- Conversations around project-based learning found folks visiting the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Edutopia.org and the Buck institute for Education's BIE.org, two of the very best resources for bringing this powerful pedagogical model into your school or classroom.
- Writely.com allows teachers to collaborate on writing, and this tool was the heart of a day spent by the group focused on electronic portfolio, as well as being key to a successful planning day held by Jim & Wendi. Valuable input came from Lars Ljungholm of Apple Computer who stopped by the training and shared some of the work he has been doing to support the TPSE schools in moving towards electronic portfolio. It allows multiple collaborators to view and edit a document in real time, and saves all versions automatically. Supported by Google, web based and free. What is not to love! While it is currently (July 14, 2006) not accepting new registrations, you can join if invited by an existing member. If you want in, please send an e-mail to jim@jimmoulton.org and let me know.
- Web 2.0 was another hot topic, and at this site teachers found lots of great tools that they could use to support their teaching. All of the tools highlighted here allow folks to "do something" and helps move schools away from the excitement about what the computers can do and into excitement about what the people can do.
- A great collection of bogus web resources was seen by several participants as being valuable in helping kids learn that not all on the web is of value, and the importance of careful reading and thinking.
- Gooogle's Earth was another resource that was shared and will no doubt become a key resource in many more classrooms this year.
Many thanks to Wendi for setting up this training opportunity and keeping everyone so well fed and hydrated, and to the teachers who came out to take advantage.
posted by Jim Moulton at 2:04 PM
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