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"Please, No More Professional Development! By Peter DeWitt on April 17, 2015 8:10 AM Today's guest blog is written by Kristine Fox (Ed.D), Senior Field Specialist/Research Associate at Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (QISA). She is a former teacher and administrator who has passion for teacher learning and student voice. Kris works directly with teachers and leaders across the country to help all learners reach their fullest potential. Peter DeWitt recently outlined why "faculty meetings are a waste of time." Furthering on his idea, most professional development opportunities don't offer optimal learning experiences and the rare teacher is sitting in her classroom thinking "I can't wait until my district's next PD day." When I inform a fellow educator that I am a PD provider, I can read her thoughts - boring, painful, waste of time, useless, irrelevant - one would think my job is equal to going to the dentist (sorry to my dentist friends). According to the Quaglia Institute and Teacher Voice and Aspirations International Center's National Teacher Voice Report only 54% percent of teachers agree "Meaningful staff development exists in my school." I can't imagine any other profession being satisfied with that number when it comes to employee learning and growth. What sense does it make for the science teacher to spend a day learning about upcoming English assessments? Or, for the veteran teacher to learn for the hundredth time how to use conceptual conflict as a hook. Why does education insist everyone attend the same type of training regardless of specialization, experience, or need? As a nod to the upcoming political campaigns and the inevitable introduction of plans with lots of points, here is my 5 Point Plan for revamping professional development. 5 Point Plan Point I - Change the Term: Semantics Matter We cannot reclaim the term Professional Development for teachers. It has a long, baggage-laden history of conformity that does not

"Students learning to create apps with Apple's Swift programming language now have a way to validate their skills with a new certification program. App Development with Swift is a new academic certification course created by Certiport in partnership with Apple that measures students' ability to program with Swift after completing a year-long program. 9to5Mac Happy Hour The new Swift certification program will be available starting this fall:"

"One of the answers you would definitely get when you ask any teacher about the skills their students should have is critical thinking. Of course there is more to it than just critical thinking, there is also the ability to Find information validate this information Synthesize it Leverage information Communicate information Collaborate with it Problem solve it Reflect about it Evaluate it Publish it"

"How did I address this tragedy in class? I hugged every last child in my classroom as he/she left for the weekend and told them that they matter, that I love them, and that they make this world better by being in it. They left smiling, believing, and feeling validated. #partofthesolution Jolie Barker- Passionate Educator"

"If the most recent U.S. Election has taught us anything it's that we live in an era of fake news and sites. With accusations flying of manipulation of stories, the media and voters, it's truly hard to know if what we read on blogs, social media and other sites is actually the truth or a tale spun to generate clicks. To further compound the problem a recent study from Stanford shows that the vast majority of students can't determine it what they read on websites is true or baloney. The study showed More than two out of three middle-schoolers couldn't see any valid reason to mistrust a post written by a bank executive arguing that young adults need more financial-planning help. And nearly four in 10 high-school students believed, based on the headline, that a photo of deformed daisies on a photo-sharing site provided strong evidence of toxic conditions near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, even though no source or location was given for the photo. With many schools and districts rolling out 1:1 initiatives and a push to digitize learning, helping students understand where their information comes from, and if it is reliable and accurate are critical skills, not just for learning for but life as well."

"At its core, the rise of "fake news" is first and foremost a sign that we have failed as a society to teach our citizens how to think critically about data and information. Take that email from a Nigerian prince offering to transfer you ten million dollars if you'll just send him $10,000 to cover the wire costs. Enough people get that email each day and wire those ten thousand dollars that this scam continues in 2016. The Internet has globalized the art of the scam and the reach of misinformation, allowing a single tweet to go viral across the planet, sowing chaos in countries on the other side of the world from the person sending it. At the heart of all such news is the inability to think critically about the information that surrounds us and to perform the necessary due diligence and research to verify and validate. In April 2013 when the AP's Twitter account was hacked and tweeted that there had been an explosion at the White House that left President Obama injured, automated stock trading algorithms took the news as fact and immediately launched a cascade of trading activity that plunged the Dow Jones by more than 100 points in less than 120 seconds. Human reporters, on the other hand, simply picked up the phone and called colleagues stationed at the White House to inquire if they were aware of any such attack and were quick to refute the false information."

"Coding, computer programming and computer science are being discussed as possible curriculum topics, pedagogical tools and integration contexts within our elementary schools. I understand, however, that some teachers may feel a certain level of concern, worry or even anxiety when it comes to learning and teaching within this area. How are educators expected to teach coding with little to no experience? How can they develop and implement lessons without adequate formal instruction in the subject area? While these questions are valid, I challenge teachers to see the novelty of coding as a valuable professional and personal opportunity."

"Many educators and school leaders alike often wonder how students can be appropriately assessed in maker environments. One of the questions that I am asked most frequently is: How do we assess in a makerspace? In my book, Worlds of Making:  Best Practices for Establishing a Makerspace for Your School, I touch upon assessment and say that a makerspace can have activities associated with the Standards and even can be assessed; however, making doesn't always have to be-indeed, I would argue, MUST not always be-tied to traditional assessment.  All too common is the mindset that traditional methods of assessment are the only valid means to measure learning.  "

"The merits of doing research and creating these reports and papers are valid. When they create them, students … Gather information Evaluate sources Organize and synthesize data Form ideas and cohesive thoughts Create a polished, finished product Cite where they got their information Here's the problem, though: the finished product just isn't very relevant to the real world, be it in the workforce or in people's personal lives. Reports and papers often end up where mine always did - in the trash. If students are going to do their best work to learn and create, shouldn't it be in a form they can be proud of - and that they want to show others? I think it's time that we turn research reports and papers on their heads. Here are 10 creative alternatives:"

"SoloLearn's Learn Java is a comprehensive guide to one of the most popular programming languages in the world. And here's a big bonus: Learn Java is FREE! The Learn Java lessons are fast, easy, and effective; the app is set up so that you can complete the work in less than three hours. No prior programming experience is needed. Once you have completed the course, you will have learned object-oriented Java programming and have the ability to write clear and valid code in almost no time at all."

"Learning technologies change student-resource interactions not only by the amount of resources that are now available to students, but also by the quality of the resources. Instead of students being limited to the textbook they receive from their school, that may or may not be outdated, they now have access to resources from literally around the world. Websites like Project Gutenberg and the National Archives give students access to millions of resources, in various forms of media, on just about any topic they could imagine. With that being said, quantity does not necessarily mean quality. For every respectable source of information online, there's an endless amount of second rate information. Teaching students how to find valid and reliable sources of information is paramount to education in the digital age. However, I don't believe it stops there."

"Digital literacy, as a set of skills that students need to develop and master in order to properly use digital technologies , is an essential component of the 21st century education. Being digitally literate should not be confused with being comfortable using certain types of digital media such as social media. And as Danah Boyd argued in her book "Understanding The Social Lives of Networked Teens" teenagers know how how to use Facebook, but their understanding of the site's privacy settings did not mesh with the ways in which they configured their accounts.They know how to get to Google but had little understanding about how to construct a query to get quality information from the popular search engine. Along with learning how to conduct effective online searches comes the the second most important skill which is that of evaluating and assessing the validity of information found online. One of the versatile tools teachers can use to teach students about web content evaluation is called CRAAP . The acronym CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, and Purpose. CRAAP is a test developed by the University of California at Chico to help students evaluate web content ( and any other content) based on those four dimensions. Below is a public domain document, a checklist, that teachers and students can use to evaluate web content. Click here to download it."

"The main arguments behind the push for students to learn to code, usually center around preparing students for future jobs. There is a skill shortage in the computer science industry which determines skilled job seekers can walk into lucrative contracts. This trend is predicted to rise. The other aspect to the usual argument is that even students who do not work in the technology industry will also benefit throughout their life and careers by learning computer science, as all industries now involve some component of programming. While these arguments are perfectly valid, there are many more reasons why kids should learn to code. They include:"

Let us first pose a question: Is it folly to nominate 100 photographs as having been influential to world events, or is this a valid historic inquiry? LIFE will, here and in the following pages, put forth its argument. You be the judge.

"It's becoming difficult to read the news in Los Angeles these days without running across yet another article about the problems faced by the sputtering LAUSD iPad initiative. Finally, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy announced this week that they were suspending the contracts with Apple and Pearson amid increasing scrutiny and investigation of the bidding process. According to Deasy, "it will also give us time to take into account concerns raised surrounding the project". There were always valid questions surrounding a bidding process that granted enormous contracts for digital courses that had not yet been developed. It's unfortunate however that an investigation into the bidding process became the catalyst for the project's suspension when it was the planning and implementation that fell woefully short in so many areas. Hindsight may be 20-20 but many were already pointing out substantial flaws in the plan at its initial announcement. As educators we know that failure is the breeding ground for learning and adapting. With that in mind, here are 5 lessons that can be drawn from the LAUSD iPad experience."

"Education researchers are beginning to validate what many teachers have long known - connecting learning to student interests helps the information stick. This seems to work particularly well with math, a subject many students say they dislike because they can't see its relevance to their lives."

"There are many modern poets saying valid and beautiful things about the world, but few people are buying their books. Walk around any book shop and you might struggle to find the typically tiny poetry section. The art of poetry remains something literary, academic, and removed from ordinary reading habits. Yet poets go to great lengths to demonstrate that poetry is diverse, accessible, and relevant. After all, song and rap lyrics are widely-loved forms of poetry. There is also poetry, as they rightly point out, in text and Twitter feeds."

"ome widely held ideas about the way children learn can lead educators and parents to adopt faulty teaching principles Jan 1, 2015 Credit: Kiyoshi Takahase segundo MYTH HUMANS USE ONLY 10 PERCENT OF THEIR BRAIN FACT The 10 percent myth (sometimes elevated to 20) is mere urban legend, one perpetrated by the plot of the 2011 movie Limitless, which pivoted around a wonder drug that endowed the protagonist with prodigious memory and analytical powers. In the classroom, teachers may entreat students to try harder, but doing so will not light up "unused" neural circuits; academic achievement does not improve by simply turning up a neural volume switch. MYTH "LEFT BRAIN" and "RIGHT BRAIN" PEOPLE DIFFER FACT The contention that we have a rational left brain and an intuitive, artistic right side is fable: humans use both hemispheres of the brain for all cognitive functions. The left brain/right brain notion originated from the realization that many (though not all) people process language more in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities and emotional expression more in the right. Psychologists have used the idea to explain distinctions between different personality types. In education, programs emerged that advocated less reliance on rational "left brain" activities. Brain-imaging studies show no evidence of the right hemisphere as a locus of creativity. And the brain recruits both left and right sides for both reading and math. MYTH YOU MUST SPEAK ONE LANGUAGE BEFORE LEARNING ANOTHER FACT Children who learn English at the same time as they learn French do not confuse one language with the other and so develop more slowly. This idea of interfering languages suggests that different areas of the brain compete for resources. In reality, young children who learn two languages, even at the same time, gain better generalized knowledge of language structure as a whole. MYTH BRAINS OF MALES AND FEMALES DIFFER IN WAYS THAT DICTATE LEARNING ABILITIES FACT Diffe