Padlet Possibilities – Using Their Phones to Keep Their Attention in Class Presenters: Kathy Magee and Paul Phillips, Faculty, Occupational Health and Safety, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology Summary: Tired of fighting your students’ phones for their attention? Maybe it’s because the phone is more interesting than the lesson (or worse, than you). Why not use those phones to encourage participation in the day’s classroom activities and keep the on the learning and lessons you have planned. This session will have participants using their Ipads, tablets, and phones to access Padlet in order to identify, discuss, and adapt ways that this free software can be used in multi-disciplines.
Using PBL, and Active and Collaborative Techniques in Science Teaching Presenter: Stamatis Muratidis, Faculty, Chemistry, Palo Alto College, TX Summary: Participants interested in tips for successfully involving students by developing Active and Collaborative Learning (ACL) techniques will be engaged by use of a variety of topics, models and tools. Most of the workshop will take place in a collaborative group format and best practices for forming, molding and nurturing collaborative groups will be emphasized. Along the way the presenter will be promoting data-driven best practices, while identifying and mitigating some of the common pitfalls of implementing PBL and ACL activities.
Relax, Reflect, Relate: 3 R’s of Contemplative Practice Presenter: William H. Johnson, Jr., Student Success Coordinator/Personal Development Coach, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC Summary: Is life moving too fast? Are you busy beyond belief? Well, slow down! Would you attend a session that allows you to take the time to relax and be still, reflect on your life, and relate your thoughts and feelings to others? If you answered “yes” to at least one of these questions, then this workshop is for you. Research has shown that people applying some type of contemplative practice in their lives are likely to be more engaged, and are healthier and happier in life. Attendees in this session will participate in two forms of contemplative practice – meditation and reflective writing – that enhance personal growth. By the end of the session, you will learn strategies to quiet the mind, engage the spirit, and connect with others!
Study Smarter, Not Just Harder! Presenter: Amy Munson, Director of Instructional Design, United States Air Force Academy Summary: The United States Air Force Academy Science of Teaching and Learning program is conducting a study on how students learn about their own learning. The research team hypothesizes that students learn more from peers than from “outsiders” such as faculty members and has set out to develop a peer training and messaging program alongside a faculty training and messaging program using the same three highly successful learning/self-management strategies. On Course structures and strategies were implemented for the training components as researchers shared the benefits of practice testing, spaced practice and successive relearning as defined in Dunlosky and Rawson’s meta-analysis of learning strategies. This workshop will give participants an opportunity to learn more about those three strategies while also learning about how to implement a student “train the trainer” program.
The 24-hour event brought together participants from area colleges studying not just computer science or engineering but also business, biotech, communications and graphic design. Students worked individually or in teams of four to develop applications for either of two recipients.
One is Catholic Charities, where coders were encouraged to improve one of its many services and programs for “very low income people.” For example, the students could come up with apps for improving the organization’s existing job skills training, immigration test training or nutrition information programs.
The other is VillageTech, a company that has created Looma, a low-power, affordable portable computer and projector box for classroom use in schools in developing countries. There, the hackers are supposed to come up with apps for use by students in Nepal, such as creating a content management and navigation system, to build an on-screen keyboard, to add to the maps available for Looma, to improve the speech capability, to create a tool for managing the webcam and related functions.
Podcasts have become excellent sources for great storytelling, interviews, and journalism.
From a few minutes to more than an hour, podcasts give content creators a chance to speak directly to their listeners free of distractions, and give listeners a new way to expand their minds during their daily commutes.
Participating teachers advance through a series of inquiry-based professional development modules. Teachers are awarded a digital badge for the successful completion of each 10-hour module. To accomplish this, they must complete the following steps: 1) study module content, 2) participate in a focused discussion with peers working on the same module, 3) create an original inquiry-based global lesson plan that incorporates new learning, 4) implement the original lesson plan in the classroom, 5) provide evidence of classroom implementation and 6) reflect on and revise the lesson created.
The final product of every module is a tested, global lesson plan that articulates learning objectives, activities, assessments, and resources for each stage of inquiry. Upon completion, teachers may publish finalized lessons in a resource library where they can be accessed by other educators. As designed, the HISD badging system will be a four-year, 16-badge approach that equates to 160 hours of professional learning for teachers.
five key features that taken together increase significantly the likelihood that the learning experience for a teacher will lead to results in the classroom for students — which, after all, is the point of professional development:
Badging requires demonstrating understanding and implementation of a target content or skill.
Badging provides recognition and motivation.
Badging allows for knowledge circulation among teachers.
