Group items tagged

Broadly speaking, there are two types of professional development (PD): formal and informal.

This is a speech generator, covering occasions such as birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, retirement etc.

"I decided to use the teacher console on Diigo to create groups for each of my classes. I used handouts and tips from Bill Ferriter's Digitally Speaking Wiki to get everything set up and explain to the student how I wanted them to find, annotate, and share resources and information. (I highly recommend Bill's resources. They saved me a ton of time.) The students had used Diigo for research on a project during a previous school year so I thought with Bill's handouts and the boys' previous experience we were in good shape to begin. I soon learned differently. We have a 1:1 laptop classroom and the boys have a natural tendency to head straight to Google any time they have a question, but it was obvious after the first day that they weren't finding the quality resources they needed. Additionally, some boys still didn't know (or forgot) how to share to a group while others didn't know how to write a quality annotation. I had assumed too much. They needed what Mike Kaechele calls a "teacher workshop" on searching for information and on how to use Diigo. They needed me to model what they should do."

"as a parent, when I got up to say a few words I simply acknowledged that for many the whole technology thing is overwhelming and the audience's heads nodded in agreement. And, I didn't speak about iPads or how they could be used. I simply said that I had seen the number one reason why for this school and for our children a 1:1 iPad program was the way to go. That reason was because the teachers believed it was the way to go. And, we should back them."

"Ever since I was young I've always loved thinking of ways to fix things, build products and make money. And, over the years, I've been fortunate to have worked with so many creative and innovative people. I'm talking about people like Whitepages' Alex Algard, Cheezburger's Ben Huh and BuddyTV's Andy Liu. These guys are absolute masters at drawing profitable conclusions from problems and ideas from totally unrelated fields. The businesses that these new ideas trigger speak for themselves. So I thought I would put down on paper what it is that makes these guys innovative thinkers and leaders, and tips that you can use to help you reach their kind of success, too. Here are 10:"

Learning in Hand Show #28 is about some of what's new in Apple's iOS 8. Instead of showing you the major features you might already know about, I demonstrate the lesser known additions that teachers, students, and parents will be interested in. These include additions to the Notes app, predictive typing, dictation enhancements, sharing options, zoom improvements, speak screen, time limits, and updates to the photo library.

"Personalized learning requires teachers to become co-learners and release their iron grip on the learning process. It requires districts to trust principals, principals to trust teachers, and teachers to trust students. It requires a great deal of conversation about what real learning is and why it matters. engaged-students2This student-driven approach to learning allows kids to explore what matters to them, to build things that don't work and to figure out why. It requires them to form opinions and justify them based on solid evidence. And it requires adults who care and can speak carefully and honestly into the lives of kids. All learning should be formative. "

If you're a user of Google Drive, then no doubt you have also heard of and likely used Google Presentations (Google's version of PowerPoint). It's a great tool to create slick presentations in the cloud, especially after its most recent overhaul. However, Google Presentations is also a handy tool for doing some great projects with your students that have nothing to do with public speaking. Here are some fun exercises you can try in your classes.