Creating+Professional+Development+and+Leadership+Opportunities

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Today’s students are used to being online. They network, play games, instant message, text, blog, create multimedia presentations, research and various other online activities. Their approach to learning has changed along with their use of digital technology. Educational leaders and teachers need rapid access to timely and relevant professional development to integrate technology and pedagogical practice into effective teaching and engaging learning experiences for our students. This section of our wiki is dedicated to providing quality online resources for creating leadership and professional development opportunities. It is important to use technology creatively and have fun. Remember, we don't need a lecture:-)!





Looking forward is an important aspect of professional development and leadership. Having the resources to "see" the future facilitates planning and integration of technology and pedagogy. The [|Horizon Report] is an annual publication that provides a snapshot of emerging technologies that are "likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry within the next five years". Each year it identifies six emerging Technologies to Watch, Key Trends in technology and Critical Challenges facing education in regards to technology.

MERLOT, Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, is a collaborative website of peer reviewed online teaching resources. The strategic focus of MERLOT is "to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by increasing the quantity and quality of peer reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed courses". We would suggest searching Learning Materials first when planning or designing professional development. Resources are organized by discipline and material type. Material resources include animation, case studies, a learning object depository, reference materials, almost 3000 simulations, social networking tools, tutorials and workshop and training resources.

The Teaching, Learning and Technology Group is a non-profit corporation that has designed a collaborative website with the mission of helping educators " use and adapt to technology in ways that support teaching and learning". It is included under this section because it offers several resources for successfully designing and planning professional development. We would suggest the Resources section. It includes professional development, planning and vision strategies. Of particular note is the section under professional development called Brief Hybrid Workshop. We believe that many of you will find this format relatively similar to the MAET Summer 2010 cohort.

When planning and designing professional development, it is critical to use technology that will engage your respective audience. What better way to find the interests, needs and abilities of your participants than to ask or survey them? Google Docs allows you to create forms that can generate the data to help you focus on relevant topics that will lead to productive and successful professional development.



Creating and sharing engaging profession development and leadership opportunities with technology requires that the course or workshop have a web-based presence. This can be accomplished with an online virtual learning environment or website. Due to financial constraints in most school districts, this section will focus on free and open source hosting resources.



Moodle is a free open source virtual learning environment. Customized courses and all of the relevant multimedia, videos and topic resources can be published online with the choice of limited or open access. Assessment assignments can easily be uploaded. Creating engaging online professional development courses in Moodle allows learners to have a sense of control over their learning environment. Instruction can be differentiated according the the learner's ability and needs. Given the professional responsibilities and time constraints on most educators, Moodle is able to provide a "just-in-time" anytime delivery system to meet the needs of busy teachers.



Weebly. is a free web hosting site that allow you to easily build your own web page. It has a "click and drag" feature that makes quick work of creating your own website. Weebly website provide a great opportunity for creating, organizing and sharing professional development programs. Individuals and departments can share information with each other or with an entire district. The possibilities are endless.



Google sites allows you to create your own professional development website for free.

__**Video Resources for Professional Development**__ Video resources can help to model content and give it purpose and meaning for the learner. They are many video sources for educators and we have listed a few below. Often teachers do not have access to several of these sites. In that case, it is possible to use a web-based converter such as KEEPVID to convert a UTube video to another video type (ex. .avi) and download it to place on Moodle or save to an external hard drive. ||= TeacherTube ||= SchoolTube ||||= TED ||||= ITunes U || __** Creating Your Own Videos and Screencasts **__ It is possible to create your own videos and screencasts to customize an online professional development course. Some editing and screencasting resources are listed below.
 * = YouTube

TechSmith is home to several screencasting (Camtasia and screen capturing software products. Jing is TechSmith's free screencasting and screen capturing software. It is easy to use and helps you to create tutorials right from your own monitor.

Windows MovieMaker is a free software program for PCs that allows you to edit and create your own videos for sharing on your professional development website.

QuickTime Player is a free download for Mac and PC that will create screen, audio and movie recordings. It will also convert various types of video. It's sharing menu allows uploading to YouTube and ITunes.



IMovie is a video editing and sharing software program from Apple for Macs. It has creative features that allow you to edit and publish videos and photos online.



This category offers several suggestions for online professional development courses and leadership opportunities widely available on the Internet.



Michigan Learnport is an online professional development course provider for educators and administrators. There are many course offerings available in the Course Catalog. Currently 70 courses are available for SB-CEUs. Several of the courses are offered for free or with very low fees. Suggestion: Make sure to check out the course syllabus and comments before making your selection.



The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development website is an excellent resource for professional development. It contains relevant webinars, an InService blog with 18 separate categories, and a catalog of online professional development courses. It also publishes Educational Leadership magazine.

Education World describes itself as "a complete web resource for teachers". It has categories of online opportunities for Professional Development and Leadership. The Virtual Workshop archives are worth a look as well.



The Educause Learning Initiative is a collaboration between educational institutions and business to advance learning through technology. It places a "strategic focus on learners and successful learning by using technology with an understanding of learners and how they learn". This website offers several professional development and leadership resources. We would suggest that you start with Learning Principles and Practice.



Edutopia is a product of The George Lucas Educational Foundation.It offers a variety of resources for Teacher Development and Technology Integration.



Tech & Learning offers several resources for educational technology leadership in its School CIO section.