It is difficult when designing professional development for teachers because they are at different ability levels, not always available and feel overwhelmed. In the past, the greatest struggle was to get teachers to attend training. It felt like I was continually begging people to attend. Last year, designing extended PD for teachers had an impact in the elementary level but not the secondary level. However, things have recently taken a turn in which schools are calling to set up training. The questions and requests have gone from "How do you find your printer and set it to default?" to "How do I find another geometry teacher/class to collaborate with?". Leaders, beyond the TTL/LTTs, have begun to emerge with minimal face to face training. It is amazing to see teachers take ideas and run with them far beyond my hopes. I struggle with meeting the needs of all teachers so that I am not overwhelming or holding others back. How do you find that balance? I am very excited to share that Kindergarten students are Skyping with author Michael Shoulders, ABC author, to create class ABC books which will be for purchase on Lulu, a first grade class calling more places than I can remember, second grade students using ipod shuffles to improve reading and math skills, intermediate classes creating movies, middle school classes collaborating to construct a team constitution, high school students using digital documents in place of paper documents for classes and much more developing each day. It definately feels that I am on a roller coaster of highs and lows.
Lifelong LearnerI learned today about SmartArt which is within Word and PowerPoint 2007 where there are many graphic organizers to easily select on type within to construct knowledge and share. When in Word or PowerPoint, select insert and then SmartArt in the Illustration section.
