Preface: I believe that professional development (PD) should be relevant, applicable, realistic, managed in a timely and efficient manner but most importantly PD needs to be beneficial for student learning. Unfortunately, I have experienced “PD shock” in the past (however, not at my current school of course) in which at least one if not all elements were not in place and has thus made me a bit “PD shy” on occasion.
Upon receipt of the agenda for this week’s Kenan Institute, I was a bit taken aback by the marathon professional development session scheduled for Tuesday. Well, that was before I experienced PD Kenan Style! After 12 hours of professional development I am still in awe of the educators I am blessed to learn from this week and wish every school teacher could experience such inspiration. The time as I write this is 12:30am Wednesday morning and I am still very pumped by the ideas shared and cultivated today. In just a few short hours from now, we are going hiking and then white water rafting! No sleep required when having so much fun in Cullowhee! The Kenan staff and other Fellows are such a wonderful group of people, we are becoming a close family rather quickly.
Details of the longest PD session in history today included us Fellows developing our individual Kenan project ideas in the morning. I will share the specifics of my project over time, but the main idea at this point, is that I will be creating a cross-curricular lesson plan built upon my research at the Assist Center regarding nanotechnology and wearable devices. The project will have a health component in the finished product, a little sharing with my colleagues along the way about cross-curricular teaching, with the end result of the project experience being the hosting of a community engagement event.
The afternoon and evening professional development sessions were very informative, creative, and structured in such a way as to maximize our learning as adults and teachers (CLICK HERE to see the Kenan EdCamp website). There were concurrent sessions to choose from all day – most of which interested me. Thankfully, since Kenan is technology savvy, notes from all speakers and topics are shared electronically since we cannot all be in two places at one time.
My notes and ideas from today are rather long to discuss in detail. However, some of the major points from the day that I want to learn more about and implement in my classroom includes numerous sources of technology, augmented reality, infographics, gamification, student motivation, disruptive innovation, various teaching techniques, and other web-based classroom tools. I have a list a mile long of useful apps and websites – some of my favorites I will list below.
Sorry to rush, but it is almost 1am and the Nantahala River is calling.
Augmented Reality Links:
Web Based Classroom Tools:
Gamification Links:
Kenan Fellows Team for Wearable Devices: Nanotechnology for Your Health