Dave – I agree that having some on-line options teachers can work through at their own pace is crucial. I usually have some of these as well. I just need to make some time to create and/or locate some new videos and such for this year.

Dr. Brown – You are correct. We certainly need a theme or starting point. Last year before planning the sessions we brainstormed 3-4 areas where our school needs improvement and we designed the sessions to fit with those needs. Hopefully recognizing these areas of need will be our first step in planning… unfortunately, this year, the district has already recognized some of these areas for all of the schools so what we feel we need will have to be shortened a bit from last year.

Again, thanks for the ideas and keep them coming!!

Once that theme is established then you can develop differentiated and participative plans for moving forward. Lacking a central theme, you have a potpourri of classes that lacks focus.

One group focused on Voicethread.com and learned the basics of how to use. The success came not from learning VT, but from the teams sitting and planning the particular units that would use the VT, the photos they would need, and rubrics for expected outcomes. The ‘geeks’ would do the setup while the non-geeks learned from them. The techno-reluctants could spend quality curriculum development time with the VT idea and they all won.

I was told another group did something similar with iKeepBookmarks. They learned about social bookmarking and then set one up and collectively planned bookmark sets for the units that they had coming up. Most could get involved and there was another real product that they created and would use.

My 2 pesos.

An example could be to spend one part of the day on Webquests.

TEACH: Discuss what webquests are and how they are used. Have some guide sheets with links that will be of interest to your teachers and provide a starting point for those that are not comfortable with technology.

HANDS ON: Have teachers work in pairs by grouping a lower tech experienced teacher with a higher tech experienced teacher of the same subject or grade level (math, English, the Arts, Science, third grade teachers, etc.) Have the teachers locate “x” number of webquests that they feel they could use in their classroom during the next 3 months.

REFLECTION: Meet back as a group and have teachers share 1 of the webquest the chose and explain why, how and when they are going to use it. You can also brainstorm solutions to potential issues they feel would prevent them from implementing the webquest.

This method keeps everyone active and working on something that is meaningful to them. In a follow up professional development session you can have the teachers discuss what they implemented with their students and how it worked. This would also be a good time for another “solution” to problems session.

Other ideas would be wikis, podcasts, blogs, streaming videos, interactive websites, simulations, etc.

Anyway, one thing that I have always found teachers to love is an opportunity to share with each other in a non-structured way. Allow for some options of breakouts where all that is going to happen is that teachers are going to share their favorite technology. Allow each teacher a few minutes to present it to the rest of the group and then open it up for discussion. I learn more in 15 minutes of those kinds of sessions than I ever do in any planned session.

Seriously though…I would like to see something similar to last year when we offered numerous options for teachers to choose from. By looking at the survey results, there seems to be a lot of options in terms of what we can offer.

I do think we need to offer some of the things that got lower interest as well just because of teachers that will be new or are in their 2nd year of teaching so that they have great learning opportunities like us older teachers.

Since I will be participating in this staff development, I am excited to see the ideas that others come up with!

I don’t know how you work beyond what you’ve said here, but I don’t think you touched on non-classroom professional development. I don’t always learn the best in a class setting, so I sympathetically try to provide succinct, refined online training materials as text with pictures and screen captured video. When there are as many topics to cover as you had in your survey, I think that needs to be a big part of your approach.

Those are my recommendations for not wasting their time — high-quality presentations and writing. As far as narrowing down the topics, I think it’s important for you to confidently select the technology topics that will most benefit the teachers. Be the expert! When planning classes for teachers to attend, make sure the topics you pick lend themselves to classes…if they really have to walk through the steps on the computer to grasp the concept, I find that I run out of time because we’re always waiting on slower users.