Mini-Conference

It is a universal problem in education.  How does a school make professional development relevant to teachers?  Our building is made up of around 130 teachers.  And while our PD committee can never make 100% of the teachers happy even some of the time, I think they got it right with today's activity. 

I had read about a Mini-tech conference in Tech and Learning Magazine several months ago.  What our building did was survey teachers on their interests in the area of technology.  As teachers, we always hear about the cool things that other teachers are doing, but we never get the chance to be taught how those cool things work.  After looking at the results of the survey, the committee found teachers in our building who were using technology and had them create a presentation on their area of expertise.  I did a session on The Flipped Classroom, for example.  We had sessions on using Ipads, Edmodo, SMART Notebook and social media.  The "expert" teachers shared their experiences during two 45 minute sessions, and teachers were able to choose the sessions that they wanted to attend.  Teachers love to be able to choose; we hate being told what to do.  The fact that teachers made the choice of what they were learning created a more positive attitude from the beginning. After attending the two sessions, teachers were allowed work time to impliment what they had learned.  I loved it!!

We are all in this together.  As teachers we must grow in our fields.  To gain the attention, and respect, for that matter, of our students, we must also continue to learn.  This is an awesome time to be in the field of education because of the exciting new technology applications available, but one person cannot learn it all on his or her own.  As teachers, we must pull or resources together and teach each other what we know.