When you look at the Sunday paper this week there will be will ads for Back to School! Where did the summer go? How did we get to the end of July so quickly? I cannot let any more time pass without talking about two wonderful professional development opportunities I had this summer.
In June some of my colleagues and I attended ISTE (International Society for Technology In Education) for the first time. WOW! What an incredible experience.
Here is a list of the top 5 great things about ISTE:
- Fabulous speakers such as Dr. Medina, author of Brain Rules
- The wonderful presenters and their fabulous insights.
- A great vendor area with lots of free giveaways.
- Listening to Alan November
- Meeting fabulous people and growing my PLC!
I am looking forward to my colleagues and I sharing this information with the rest of our faculty when we return to school. You definitely don’t want to miss ISTE 2012. For more information about ISTE go to http://www.iste.org/conference/ISTE-2012.aspx
As I mentioned in my first post I have a new position in my school as an Instructional Technology Coach, I am one of two coaches. As coaches we attended the Understanding By Design (UbD) Train the Trainer Workshop just two weeks ago. UbD is a framework to deepen student understanding through a “backwards design”. Grant Wiggins was absolutely incredible and a true inspiration. This year we will be implementing UbD. We already reflect upon our teaching strategies and how we impact our students, along with discussing the essential question of the lesson, so we are on our way of a successful UbD implementation. For more information about UbD go to http://www.authenticeducation.org/index.lasso
This has been a wonderful summer of professional development. I am really looking forward to the upcoming school year!
