A Day of Tech P.D. for Educational Services

It was such a pleasure to provide professional development for our Educational Services team.
Google Form -- Pretty, isn't it?

I loved using technology to start us off. In a Google Form, they completed a survey. The form had three sections. It had some questions to collect data of their prior knowledge. There was a section on norms where they checked the boxes of norms they thought were suitable for today's training, and an option to type a norm in. The  norms that the majority agreed on were:
  1. Be positive.
  2. Help each other out.
  3. Be willing to try.
  4. Have fun.
They also wrote three descriptions for the Ed Serv team. We then took those descriptions and created a word cloud in Wordle.

What I liked was modeling how easy a Google Form was to use. We viewed the summary of data to show what areas we should focus on. Plus, it got them thinking about how they could use this in their own professional development.

Create your own Animation
Thanks Theresa Bartholomew for Fodey idea!
Other topics of the morning were:
  • Back Channel
  • Introduction to wikis through Titan Pad -- so we could use the "chat" as our Back Channel, and we could take group notes in the wiki space.
  • Doc Camera basics specific to the two types of doc cams in the district.
  • SMART Board basics specific to the different sites.
  • An introduction to blogs -- we had enough time to check out my BlogRoll and briefly touch on the role of blogs in education.
  • The majority of our time was looking at Google Apps features, documents, and forms. There have been a few changes/improvements that we went over.
It was encouraging to hear the discussion on how they could use these in the next professional development they provide and amongst themselves. 

I want to thank Heather Wallace for asking me to do this and for brainstorming what things we wanted PD on. I absolutely loved planning and facilitating today. Special thanks to Theresa Bartholomew for co-facilitating during portions of today. I loved learning with you all!

Comments

  1. HeatherApril 6, 2011 at 10:04 PM

    Tracy...it was a great morning together... we learned so much... I created some word clouds tonight with my family and then created a sample survey for the TITLE I specialists to preview...thanks again for getting us rolling with all of this... I appreciate the time that you spent putting it all together and look forward to another session as you help to keep moving us forward...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Theresa BartholomewApril 7, 2011 at 4:30 PM

    It was a blast hearing everyone's ideas and learning together. I'm glad we had that opportunity.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tracy WatanabeApril 10, 2011 at 10:31 AM

    Hi Heather,
    I'm so glad you got to take the ideas from our PD and immediately put it to use! I too look forward to doing this again. I had a blast!
    Kindly,
    Tracy

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tracy WatanabeApril 10, 2011 at 10:36 AM

    Hi Theresa,

    I agree, it's always a joy to learn together. Even though many of what we did in PD wasn't new to you nor I, we still got something out of it. I'm glad you got to see an overview of Google Apps, and I learned from Tara about copy/paste features in spreadsheets I wasn't aware of and the log on as a different user button -- since my Blogger trumps Google Apps user name in most cases. I also learned from you some different features in Google Sites I wasn't aware of (like how to make it into a blog). Thanks! I look forward to learning more with the Ed Serv/Ed Tech PLC.

    Regards,
    Tracy

    ReplyDelete

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