| Professional Development Series InfoSearch Workshop |
| Page 2 of 4 |
| Block Two, Bibli/Webliographies
All of the Bibli/Webliographies posted in this block are intensive, like manage a supermarket, trying to present all of the good stuff in one place. They are also content specified, marked with clear labels. To meet the unique needs of the teachers working for Science Park High School, all of the Bibli/Webliographies are discussed with department chairs before they are posted, to make sure the materials support our teaching curriculums. Sample Bibli/Webliography -- Math Block Three, Demos The purpose of this block is to show teachers what can do what. It is a showcase on what can be done. They are usually lessons using technologies successfully used in the classes. As of now, my collection included podcast, Adobe captive 3, Excel for class planning based on on-going assessment, digital video and digital story telling. There are more to come. Teachers come here to look at what others are doing, if they like it, and wanted to do a similar thing in their classes, talk to me. If I know how to do it, I will teach them; if I do not, I will lead them to the source. Sample Demo 1Use Excel as a Teaching Tool Sample Demo 2Podcast : Introducing a book, The Analects Sample Demo 3Adobe Captive 3: Information Scaffolding ESLS Block four, Discussion Forum Communicate with teachers effectively is the key of my success. It is impossible for me to serve our teachers well if I do not hear from them. Right now I am using the sharing feature of Google .doc and the interactive features of e-board service. In the future, when the school finished installing optic fiber wide band with web 2.0 software, this block will be more tangible and convenient to use. Sample Google .doc sharable file UOP The off-line feature The off-line part of this PD series is to communicate with ALL teachers of the whole school through visiting / participating the school PLC meetings throughout of the year. The purpose is to get my voice out, tell teachers on what have been posted there, so that when the time they need things, they know where to click. At Science Park High School, all teachers are required to participate a Professional Learning Committee (PLC).There are six such committees (including guidance group) and each committee has about 12 teachers. These committees meet two times a week, each meeting is 42 minutes long (one class period). This activity goes on throughout the school year. It is a mandatory activity agreed in between of the board and the teachers union, because it takes teachers preparing time. I will travel through the Professional Learning Committee (PLC) groups in their meeting times. Before I go, I will schedule my visit with the individual PLC coordinator (Refer Appendix A for a sample PLC agenda). I will tell her/him my intention and ask her/him to give me 20 minutes to introduce my PD series to the group, two times a week, two weeks in a row so that I will be able to cover all of my four blocks of the series. That means I will visit each group four times with 20 minutes a time, or each teacher spend 80 minutes in my work shop for the school year. This is the minimum time of my planned visits, could be more. I will visit all of the six PLC groups through the school year. There are no fixed schedules. As long as time permit, or whenever there is a need, I will just go. The idea of using PLC meetings to get my words out came to me last year, when I had an extremely hard time to squeeze into district scheduled professional days. I tried several times to schedule my workshops using those days, but failed every time. In contrast, the PLC meetings meet so often (twice a week every week), and the coordinators are looking hard for the meaningful topics to make his/her PLC meetings productive and fruitful. |