680 Artifact Reflection #1

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Professional Development. It's a very interesting word.

A word that conjures this notion that information, discussion, and practice improves our profession.

Educational PD topics are broad and limitless; usually tied to school improvement goals, established by administrators, or (hopefully) shaped by teacher input. As I approach another school year, no doubt chockfull of PD opportunities, I reflect in this post about my opportunity to design a day of professional development and reflection.

In Module 6, I developed a full-day PD opportunity designed around the Edcamp model which

• allows educators to take charge of their own PD and attend sessions that most pertain to their needs or goals
• allows educators to collaboratively determine session topics
• encourages educators to facilitate sessions by sharing experiences and conversations, not a planned presentation

Edcamps were “born” to include sessions about using technology in the classroom but don’t always; many times it’s related to general education topics.

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I’ve attended a few edcamps through conferences I’ve attended and was pleased by the overall outcome. I walked out feeling better educated on topics than if I had attended an individual conference session with one main presenter talking to me. Edcamps are hard to implement if the school climate isn’t receptive to this sort of idea. Some teachers are comfortable being told what to do and where to go. Those teachers sit through sessions and (usually) don’t pay attention but are perfectly content to waste a half-day sitting there. But, there are other colleagues I work with who would like to see more personalized PD that relate to topics in education or technology that we grapple with day after day, year after year. Why not experience PD together and be expert presenters together?

With these ideas in mind, I developed a professional development day for the CTE, Science and Math Departments at my school. The design of the agenda allowed for teacher choice, personal reflection, and small group work that would continue throughout the year during PLC meetings. I was pleased with the outcome and hope to present my ideas to the building administrators at my school.

677 Artifact Reflection #1

My high school Earth Science students have been engaged in a unit related to sustainable farming. In the last four weeks, my students have looked at the past, the present, and the future of farming in the United States. I would like to share my thoughts on two multimedia tools that I was introduced to in Module 2 and how I used them to create an EdPuzzle video related to the 1930s Dust Bowl.

The first resource I learned more about was a site called Listenwise. This is a free platform that provides snippets of National Public Radio (NPR) shows as podcasts for teaching and learning. Every day, NPR puts out many incredible stories and some of those stories have tons of learning potential for teachers and students. These stories go beyond the written text in helping teachers and students connect to topics like never before.

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I thought a library of podcasts that a person could keyword search was pretty impressive, but Listenwise goes further in providing comprehension questions, discussion themes, vocabulary, listening graphic organizers, quizzes connected to the podcast, transcripts so that students can read along, and class activities related to external resources.

Although it didn't directly relate to the creation of my EdPuzzle video, the Listenwise resources I found helped supplement my unit. I look forward to using this platform in the future for other units I teach.

The second resource that I used to create my Module 2 assignment was the website called Critical Past. This is another free platform that provides historical video clips and images. The collection has thousands of videos and thousands more of still images. All the media are available for viewing online, or for immediate download. Critical Past includes some of history’s most notable moments.

I was looking for some media on the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the Great Depression and found a speech that FDR gave to a crowd of citizens from the Great Plains during his presidency. Critical Past's site is well-organized and easy to use. With a few different keyword searches and some time to listen, I had found what I was looking for! And because EdPuzzle allows users to upload their own videos, it was easy to download a video taken from Critical Past and turn it into a teaching tool for my farming unit!

I found Listenwise and Critical Past to be very useful multimedia tools. I even went so far as to suggest these two platforms to several science and social studies teachers at my school. After reading this reflection, I hope you too have an opportunity to discover these versatile resources!