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Trainer's Toolkit Discovery Education offers a wealth of resources to help you plan and implement effective Discovery Education streaming staff development sessions for your school or district.

The National Staff Development Council (NSDC) is the largest non-profit professional association committed to ensuring success for all students through staff development and school improvement. NSDC's purpose: Every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves. Read more about NSDC's purpose and what it means for educators and schools. The Council views high quality staff development programs as essential to creating schools in which all students and staff members are learners who continually improve their performance.

"Eight-page newsletter published four times a year. Each issue of Tools focuses on a single essential component of school improvement and features timeless "tools" and resources that can be used in school improvement efforts now and in years to come. "

"NSDC publications provide the bridge between what is known about high-quality staff development and how you can put those ideas into practice. "

"The purpose of interventions is to ensure students are provided with the standards based supports they need to meet/exceed grade level standards. A comprehensive system of interventions involves a graduated set of safety nets aligned to specific student needs and standards. In Pennsylvania, ELL educational programs are all found within the instructional core"

"Instructional strategies determine the approach a teacher may take to achieve learning objectives. Five categories of instructional strategies and explanation of these five categories can be found within this site. Instructional methods are used by teachers to create learning environments and to specify the nature of the activity in which the teacher and learner will be involved during the lesson. While particular methods are often associated with certain strategies, some methods may by found within a variety of strategies. A sampling of instructional methods with accompanying explanations are presented in this website."

The Internet provides tons of free tools and resources for teachers to use in their classroom. This handbook is for new teahers and/or teachers who are wanting to integrate technology in their classroom. The tools are both to use with students and use professionally.

A great list of techie type teachers to follow on Twitter. One click follows them all!

"Summer has officially started for many of you! I know that you will probably be relaxing for the first few days, but eventually you may feel the need to be inspired and motivated for the upcoming school year! Social media provides us with incredible opportunities to choose the way we want to develop professionally. You can choose the topic, the medium, and who you want to learn from. You can choose the way you like to learn, because social media provides us with several multimedia experiences, such as webinars, LMS, live video, and more. The experience is usually dynamic and motivating because you are learning with others around the world! Additionally, you will be developing your Personal/ Passionate Learning Network (PLN)."

Professional Development Make the most of Discovery Education content with these tools and resources.

Dianne's Diigo List on Professional Development.. this list is updated regularly.

The following tips are from the series Empowering the Beginning Teacher in Mathematics, by Cynthia Thomas.

In this day of high-stakes testing and frequent complaints from teachers that they "don't have time to use technology" in the classroom, this wiki seeks to bridge the gap to help teachers see that technology doesn't have to be an add-on that distracts them from focusing on the curriculum. Rather than accepting an either/or mentality, we can begin to connect technology to the accepted "best practices" that our districts expect to see in our classrooms. Readers and contributors will learn and share information about specific Web 2.0 tools that can be used by teachers, and strategies that can be used with those tools that align with and support research-based effective instructional methods. Reference will be made to specific instructional strategies and a variety of examples will be shared covering all content areas from K-12 to college/university levels. This wiki is an information resource as well as an interactive space where readers can add their own insights and strategies.

"These free instructional modules were developed by education faculty and professional developers for their colleagues. They can be employed as extension units in existing courses or can be used independently in workshops and meetings. Each module includes articles, video footage, PowerPoint presentations, and class activities. They draw from the wealth of the Foundation's archives of best practices and correlate with ISTE/NCATE NETS standards."

PIIC, a partnership of the Annenberg Foundation and the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), is a statewide resource for developing and supporting consistent, high-quality instructional coaching in Pennsylvania schools. PIIC builds on the work of the Pennsylvania High School Instructional Coaching Initiative (PAHSCI), which established a model for instructional coaching in 26 high schools in 16 high-needs districts. PIIC takes a different approach: creating the position of "instructional mentor" to support coaching in each of the state's 29 Intermediate Units (IUs) and providing resources and professional development for mentors, coaches, teachers, and administrators.

You've completed your lessons for the day, but you still have some time left and a group of eager students with nothing productive to do. What can you do in this time to keep your class under control until the bell rings? Here is a list of 10 things to do when you only have 5 minutes left in class.

"Becoming accustomed as a coach to not having your own classroom or your own students was probably challenging. I am sure, however, you quickly engaged in conversations with your colleagues about offering to demonstrate or co-teach some lessons to those teachers willing to share their students with you. Although alien at first, I'll bet it was very rewarding to work with students again and feel that great "high" that a teacher feels when the lesson worked well. "

"Chris Dede, a professor of learning technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is a leading authority on online teacher professional development. For 16 years, beginning in the early 1990s, Dede taught a course at HGSE called "Learning Media That Bridge Distance and Time." The rapid changes in interactive technology during that period brought the potential of online teacher learning into sharp focus for Dede. "I saw it as an important way of scaling up quality instructional practice, and an important lever for education reform, but also I saw that it wasn't going far very fast," he explains. Dede's investigations into online professional development led him to gather a group of researchers, distance-learning experts, and professional development providers at a conference at Harvard in 2005, and subsequently to publish, as editor, Online Professional Development for Teachers: Emerging Models and Methods (2006). The book, which explores the strengths and tensions of online teacher training, has become a key resource in the field."

Are you looking for ways to incorporate digital media into your teaching? PBS Teachers offers a series of FREE monthly webinars featuring leading education technology experts and PBS producers sharing resources and strategies to help teachers use digital media to engage students in rich learning experiences.