Previous Archives
Below you will find many of our recorded and archived sessions. Just click on the link to view the archived video.
2015 Live PD Session Archives:
December 17, 21st Century Assessment with Starr SacksteinStarr discusses techniques from her book, Hacking Assessment, that transform assessment to coach and inspire students to learn more, try harder, and own their learning. Teachers should no longer dole out grades like their jobs depend upon it but rather need to talk to kids about what they know and can do. You can download the slides here.
December 9, School Voice from Dubai with Russ Quaglia
Dr. Russ Quaglia's monthly webinar series continued with a brief overview and update of the various School Voice efforts happening around the world. Participants shared their School Voice experiences so that we can listen to, learn from, and amplify the success occurring in schools today. This session featured fascinating practices in Dubai.
November 17, Using Games for Inclusive Classes with Ann Francis
It’s always a challenge when you have a classroom with students of all different abilities operating at different levels. Games can engage and teach students of all abilities, and Ann discussed strategies and gave examples on how she has used games, taught other teachers how to use games in order to reach all learners. Ann used Skoolbo as an example. You can download the slides here.
November 12, Teaching the Last Backpack Generation with Zachary WalkerWill this be the last generation of kids who bring backpacks to school? How does this change the way we teach? This participatory, fun discussion focused on practical tips about how we can help our students become creative, critical thinkers, who understand context and how to curate content. We can teach students to be curious about the world and enjoy learning. And often, we'll find we are learning as much as the students are. Jason had quite a few great resources that you can incorporate into your classes.
November 11, Digital Citizenship with Jason Ohler
We should be using digital citizenship to create the digital lifestyles and communities that reflect what's best in us. After all, we want students to learn how to use technology not only safely and responsibly, but also with a sense of inspiration and opportunity. Students should be able to tell good sources from bad ones, understand the consequences of their actions, and become expert searchers. Jason goes over classroom activities as well as practical strategic planning options to advance digital citizenship in your school and district.
November 3, Teacher Voice with Dr. Russell Quaglia and Dr. Lisa Lande
Can we possibly give students their voice without teachers having voice as well? Authentic deep learning occurs best in open environments, where both teachers and students can take risks and feel they have a role in decisions. Participants discuss how the impact they can have on education and the obstacles, tips, and tricks to more open educational environments. You can also download Dr. Quaglia's and Dr. Lande's slides so you can get a first person view of whether the pictures accurately convey the messages (you'll have to view the video to understand the reference).
October 29, Part 2, Education Reform Game with Jeff Borden
Jeff Bordon describes all the events that happened to him over the last week after the attempted kidnapping. We then discussed what we'd learned about Dewey, Vygotsky, and Piaget from the clues everyone uncovered. And then Jeff showed us how to create a similar game for our own teachers and students using free materials and websites. The slides can be downloaded here.
October 26, Education Reform Game with Jeff Borden
Jeff Borden of Saint Leo University starts to unveil the lost educational plans of John Dewey and Lev Vygostky, but has to flee, leaving behind clues about education reform, secret papers, hidden websites that must be decoded by participants. The search starts at http://tinyurl.com/Mysteryboard. Students have to decypher the password from the video. And then can communicate once they further decrypt the clues on the website. One of the clues is a hidden Twitter account that allows the participants to share their discoveries.
September 21, Encouraging Parents with Robert Kravitz
Robert Kravitz, Superintendent of the Englewood, NJ Public School District, describes how he encourages parents to partner with the school district, and how active parental participation can help drive student achievement while decreasing behavior referrals. When parents, teachers, and administrators work together, stress is greatly reduced for all.
October 8, Project Mapping for PBL with Kathleen FritzKathleen discusses how to organize student projects so that they meet learning objectives and keep students on track. PBL is motivational for students, but it can be chaotic for teachers without proper planning. Learn how a project map makes a visual tool that pulls together goals, standards, content, creativity, lessons, activities, reflection, and feedback. You can download the slides here.
August 25, Game Jams with Matt Farber
Matt discusses how students learn to tackle broad open-ended problems through computational thinking, design, systems thinking, collaboration, planning, storyboarding, iterative development during the Game Jams. Matt uses Game Jams with his own Middle School Social Studies classes in addition to helping other schools conduct game jams around the country. Matt is also author of Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning and a leader of Games4Ed, a nonprofit organization that helps roll out game-based learning. Download the slides here.
August 20, Hacking Education with Mark Barnes
Mark shared and discussed insights from his new book, Hacking Education, 10 Quick Fixes for Every School. co-authored with Jennifer Gonsalez. We discussed two hacks, Meet Me in the Cloud, and Pineapple Charts. The first is a way for people in different places to conduct discussions as needed asynchonously. The second allows teachers within a school or district to share best practices and take charge of their own professional development. You can download the slides here.
August 19, Harnessing the Educational Power of Minecraft with Garrett Zimmer
This live event was an interactive discussion on the use of and design of effective game-based learning curriculum (GBL) in Minecraft. Whether you're new to Minecraft or an Expert Game-based Educator, you can see how educators GBL concepts to their Minecraft lessons, and then apply those techniques to help you harness its full potential. Garrett will be conducting other sessions on Math, Science, ELA, and Social Studies uses of Minecraft, and is creating Minecraft curriculum for schools at MineGage. You can download the handouts, here.
July 29, Easy Problem Based Learning with Adam Bellow
Problem Based Learning is messy, it can be difficult to manage and orchestrate and to channel for specific learning objectives.
Adam Bellow, ISTE keynoter and edupreneur discusses different ways to overcome these obstacles with educators. Adam built many of these techniques into a ground breaking app, WeLearnedIt, which he demonstrates at the end of the session. You can download Adam's slideshere.
July 29, Telling Your Story with Jeff Bradbury
Getting kids, teachers, your school, your district, and your peers excited about your vision. Jeff Bradbury's TeacherCast has over 50,000 unique visitors a month, so you know he knows a lot about effective communications. In this session, Jeff discusses with teachers the basics of powerful communications, and coaches them in molding the way they talk. Do you want to get students excited about what they are learning? Do you want to motivate parents to help you channel their kids? Do you want to align other educators or administrators with your vision? This session lays out the framework, using how your introduce your self. In a subsequent session, Jeff will cover applying that framework to other types of communications. Watch our Upcoming Web Events for the date. You can download Jeff's slides here.
July 9: Grading Actions that Drive Impact into Student Learning with Dave Nagel
Why do we persist on averaging students' grades over a quarter, when this has been proven to be suboptimal? How can we encourage students to focus on learning rather than grades? And how do we balance learning goals with the necessities of report cards and assessment? In this Edchat Interactive, Dave discusses practical strategies that align directly with mastery learning and standards referenced grading, and pulls key lessons from his book, "Effective Grading Practices for Secondary Teachers".
June 11: Integrating Games into Classes with Ryan Schaaf
Ryan discussed practical ways to use games in classes, pulling information from his two books: Making School a Game worth Playing and Using Digital Games as Assessment and Instruction Tools. Ryan provided several free resources, an Evernote shared notebook on articles about the use of games in schools, a database of effective games with descriptions and reviews, a form to enter new reviews of games, and Ryan's website, http://www.infosavvy21.com/. You can download Ryan's slides here.
June 4: Making School a Game Worth Playing with Ryan Schaaf
Ryan led a discussion on the elements that make using digital games a powerful tool for the learning process. We explored the popularity of games, explored their impact on digital culture, and talked about how to overcome some of the barriers for clasrroom adoption. Ryan Schaaf is an Assistant Professor of Technology at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and a Faculty Associate for the Johns Hopkins University School of Education Graduate Program. Download the slides here.
June 2: Leading Professional Learning with Tom Murray and Jeff Zoul
We often mistake Professional Development, which is delivery of material, with Professional Learning, which involves gaining new skills and knowledge in order to be a better educator. Tom and Jeff, led a rousing discussion on how schools and teachers can engage participants and improve results, from their own experiences and also from the participants'. Listen and hear how educators are connecting and learning in new ways to meet their needs--and those of their students! Download the slides here.
May 28: Effective Grading Actions That Drive Impact Into Student Learning with Dave Nagel
Changing any practice in schools is difficult—Changing grading actions may be the toughest of all. Often this is because a lack of teacher voice involved the discussions and decision-making. Grading expert and Corwin author Dave Nagel, shared specific strategies teachers and leaders can use to improve their quality & impact of their grading actions through intentional collaborative efforts. Dave then provided specific grading strategies teachers can implement immediately into their school or classroom.
May 26: Developing a District Vision for Technology with Andrew Marcinek
Andrew shared strategies from his book: The 1:1 Roadmap: Setting the Course for Innovation in Education. Some of the questions we discussed were: Does tech drive education decisions, or do district goals and pedagogy drive tech decisions? What are the elements of an effective planning process for technology, so that the technology results in fundamental changes that result in better student learning? View the slides here.
May 21: Keys to Change Leadership with Robert Dillon
Have you tried to implement systemic, meaningful change? How is that working for you? We have a momentous task to move from an environment of rote learning to the collaborative nature of the networked plugged-in collaborative 21st Century environment. Robert's experience as an implementation change agent is inspiring to all of us. Here he discussed coaching, mentoring, and guiding change with school and district leaders. His notes are here.
May 19: Ken Halla on the Teacher as Leader of the Digital Classroom
Tech doesn't necessarily lead to individualized, personalized learning. But it can certainly provide tools to help teachers spend more time with their students, provide more engaging activities for students, and provide more time on task. Can teachers lead the charge? Ken presents different strategies and then discusses options with other educators in the Edchat interactive event. You can view his slides here.
May 14: Edtech tools for developing a love of reading with Shannon Miller
You had to be there to really participate in this dynamic session, but you can still learn what Shannon and the participants had to say about how they get kids excited about reading. Here is a link to the Padlet that contains all the tools Shannon included: http://bit.ly/engageyourreaders
You can read Shannon's blog at http://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/ and follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/shannonmmiller
Unofficially, and you didn't read it here, we heard she is writing a book.
April 27: Encouraging constructive parental involvement with Erin Klein
Erin described the many tools that bring parents into their children's lives at school, and which can be used to strengthen teacher-parent collaborations to advance student learning. You can also view Erin's slides.
Learn more about Erin at Kleinspiration.
February 26: Customized, Personalized Learning with Sherry Crofut
Sherry Crofut led a rousing discussion on personalizing Student learning in the era of test score madness, tight budgets, and education technology transformation. It was a highly engaging discussion you won't want to miss. View the archive.
February 24: Augmented Reality with Katie Ann Wilson
Katie Ann showed teachers how to take an original student or teacher piece of work and turn it
January 21: Students Report on Passion Based Learning, with Don Wettrick
into a mind blowing interactive augmented reality project in just a few clicks. She talked with educators about the 4D Studio from Daqri along with other products to create unique interactive projects, lessons, reports, and etc. View the archive
Don's second Edchat Interactive session featured his students talking about their tremendous passion for learning when they take responsibility for their learning while also helping out the community. Don is the author of Pure Genius: Building a Culture of Innovation.
January 15: Getting 1:1 Right, with Andy Marcinek
Author Andy Marcinek's Edchat session discusses how to make the most out of a 1:1 environment, and steers participants around some of the implementation pitfalls. Andy speaks from experience, having been a science teacher, school administrator, and architect of a successful 1:1 implementation. He is the author of The 1:1 Roadmap, Setting the Course for Innovation in Education.
January 7: Genius in Your Classroom Part 1 with Don Wettrick
Don introduces the idea of passion driven learning, and his students interact with teachers to discuss how they learn, overcome obstacles, and contribute to their communities as part of their school activities. View the archive here.
2014 Live PD Sessions:
Activating Student Voice As A Driver For Personalized Learning-Presenter: Phil Stubbs
November 19: Phil shows how the right types of questions trigger deep thought and transfer ownership of the learning to the student, and then explains how teachers can improve their questions through the use of the free Verso App.
Using The Verso App To Activate Student Learning-Presenter: Phil Stubbs
December 01: The workshop will include access to starter activities suitable for use in class with your students to both introduce them to VersoApp and to initiate the development of key collaboration, communication and critical thinking dispositions.
Collaboration Beyond The Classroom-Presenter Mark Barnes
December 03: In this webinar, Author and Speaker, Mark Barnes discusses what it means to be an iStudent, the qualities and how to foster deeper learning in the classroom with technology.
Student Voice, Aspirations and Santa Claus-Presenters: Dr. Russ Quaglia and Dr. Michael Corso
December 11: Students who feel that they have a voice in their education and who take action on their aspirations are 7 times as engaged as other students. Dr. Q and the Mickster will discuss tips for helping your own students develop their voice and aspirations without relying on wishful thinking or Santa Clause to lift their achievement.