Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Following Professional Development Initiatives for Educators
This is my 4th ( fourth ) learning initiative this summer.I do this much in the way I was an activist in civil rights.
I believe that we teachers are empowered with proper professional development and support and able to reach
a large audience of the educational community.
Beginning Steps
SCALABLE GAME DESIGN
I took a course at the Atlas Institute at Colorado University with Dr. Alexander Repenning on Scalable Game Design. That was a very intensive immersion into gaming.
http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Teacher_program
We started with frogger. http://www.freeonlinegames.com/adventure-games/frogger.html.Ok, that is a video, but I really , really made the game. We had the best teachers. Many squashed frogs later, I had created a whole game.
I have heard so much from researchers and others that teachers could not do this work that I take the course. I believe that people do not understand that teachers need sustained professional development and support for their technology work. Encouragement helps too.
Professional Organization Support
ISTE a learning initiative but is in reality a conference. I learned that it was too big and that I needed to go online to get some of the valuable information that is the treasure of face to face that a conference is. I never found Larry Anderson, but people kept giving me messages that he was looking for me. ISTE has incredible support for K-12 educators.
GRASS ROOTS INITIATIVE ( ITEST FUNDED)
http://itestlrc.edc.org/
We did a grass roots initiative at the Denver School of Science and Technology that was the
way in which some of us satisfied our concern for those who could not attend ISTE because of financial reasons. Joyce Malyn Smith of EDC funded our lunch, Eli Regalado of Denver ICOSA
found the place for us and supported us locally, and other sisters of mine in education came in and did workshops, sharing and teaching. That would include Katie Klinger, Karen North, Carolyn Staudt, Mano Talaiver, Joyce Pittman, and the guys, Vic Sutton, Allan Jones, and others who did the keynotes. Joyce Malyn Smith and Alexander Repenning
We wanted to do outreach to those who economically were not able to attend ISTE, but to share
educational information.
The Grass Roots Initiative Reaching the Underserved
http://wininstem.eventbrite.com/
TERAGRID
https://www.teragrid.org/web/eot/
You may not know much about computational thinking. I work with EOT people to learn , how can we involved K-12 teachers in the computational sciences. This was a conference in Pittsburgh. There is a very supportive community of researchers there.
GLOBALORIA
http://www.worldwideworkshop.org/programs/globaloria
I am now at the Globaloria Teacher Institute in Charleston West Virginia . There is formal
support and set up for teachers and we are being promoted through the setting up of accounts, wikis, managing a blog, Contacts and web logins, ways to show progress reports, student evaluation , knowledge area resources, and other sets of information that a teacher might need. . There is an academy approach. It is very supportive .
You can find the Educator’s Wiki at http://www.myglife.org/usa/wvwiki/
To use this Globaloria there are threaded instructional pages and this face to face
training. It is exciting to be with real teachers.
Note the carefully created ideational scaffolding for Globaloria.
This project is different than just stumbling through learning how.
http://www.worldwideworkshop.org/programs/globaloria
photos of some days of the academy
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=247311&id=593996326
Globaloria is an engaging, student-centered delivery mechanism to teach STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Along the way, students also learn game design, programming, wiki formatting, writing, and multimedia production skills.
http://www.worldwideworkshop.org/press#thejournal
Here is a great article on Globaloria
http://thejournal.com/Articles/2010/05/19/From-Instruction-to-Construction-Rethinking-the-Classroom-Model-with-Globaloria.aspx?Page=1
This is guided professional development with a capital P. Awesome. More than that it is a state initiative that is scaling up. All of us as teacher leaders can teach for America with guidance.
Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Power of US