Professional Learning
How many times have you been in a PD and thought "I already know this" "This is wasting my time" "I could be doing this" or even "this is great but now what do I do with all this stuff I just learned" or "this is great, I will plan for this activity this weekend" (and then you never get to it) or maybe you even try to implement the new plan but it didn't go as planned or you wanted to go further but there was no one to collaborate with.
Through my course at Lamar, I have learned the 5 key principles of what it takes to hold an effective PD to really make a change within my organization. I have been able to use what I have learned about effective PDs to create a presentation about what an effective PDs looks like and how we can model this using a PD on STEAM integration. I have also added an outline for the STEAM PD (under continuous construction), all the resources, as well as the backstory to why we think STEAM is important for our district and how we plan to teach others about STEAM education through effective PL (Professional Learning).
Through my course at Lamar, I have learned the 5 key principles of what it takes to hold an effective PD to really make a change within my organization. I have been able to use what I have learned about effective PDs to create a presentation about what an effective PDs looks like and how we can model this using a PD on STEAM integration. I have also added an outline for the STEAM PD (under continuous construction), all the resources, as well as the backstory to why we think STEAM is important for our district and how we plan to teach others about STEAM education through effective PL (Professional Learning).
How to make it stick.
People are never done learning. Even as children we are born wanting to learn about the world around us and this natural feeling never leaves. The way that we teach teachers is important to guide this natural urge to deepen understanding and learn new ways of teaching our students to the best of our abilities. By presenting information to staff in an productive way where people feel as if their time, opinions and ideas are important and their voices are heard, we will be setting the foundation to an effective PL and creating a community of supportive learners.
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Here is a video reflection from a group of teachers and how they feel after having effective professional development in their district. Look at their attitudes towards learning and how they collaborate. They are working collaboratively to make a change in their district.
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What are the 5 Priniciples?
Effective Professional Development
Our district is currently working to implement the 6C skills: collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity, content and confidence (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2016) into our classrooms. We have been able to see some of this work coming into play but we are currently unable to make it stick with our staff and our students. Staff are feeling unsure of HOW to implement these skills and WHAT it really means to be implementing the 6Cs into our classrooms. I feel we are hitting components of effective PL but now all pieces making this seem not as effective as it could be.
Andrea and I are working on an innovation plan to implement STEAM into the classroom daily in order to teach the 6C skills to our students. We know that to get others on board and wanting to learn more, the key will be an effective PL. When teachers are self-motivated to make changes and learn more, we know we will able to create a greater change. The goals for our PL will be to get our staff towards this self-directed learning by use the 5 Key Principals of Effective Professional Development ((Gulamhussein, 2013).
Andrea and I are working on an innovation plan to implement STEAM into the classroom daily in order to teach the 6C skills to our students. We know that to get others on board and wanting to learn more, the key will be an effective PL. When teachers are self-motivated to make changes and learn more, we know we will able to create a greater change. The goals for our PL will be to get our staff towards this self-directed learning by use the 5 Key Principals of Effective Professional Development ((Gulamhussein, 2013).
With Andrea and I working together, we have decided to create 2 presentations for our different audiences (teachers and administration). We have created these presentation to introduce our STEAM innovation plan as well as how we plan to implement effective Professional Learning.
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Creating these presentations took a lot of time, preparation and most importantly learning! Through our course at Lamar we have learned how to effectively put together a presentation and the key components needed to make it stick. For my presentation, I used a power point, where I added slides and recoded a voice-over per slide. I hope to this makes my presentation real for others as they hear me sharing my ideas throughout the presentation. Learning to add these voice overs and time the animations in the slides took some Googling. I had to learn how to download YouTube videos to my computer in order to add them to my presentation, as well as how to time out the animations so they appeared when I wanted.
As an honest reflection, I used to know how to do all of these things but I have not created a presentation to share with others using PowerPoint in a very long time, so much of this learning was a needed refresher. I typically use Google Slides or Prezi for my presentations now but using PowerPoint seemed easier for the voice-over portions, for this specific presentation.
I liked that by using PowerPoint, I could stop and record something new at each new slide. This gave me the opportunity to really think and plan out what I wanted to say per slide, re-recording as needed. I know with other presentation tools, doing a voice over can be a challenge because if you mess up what you would like to say mid-presentation you only have 2 options - keep going and verbally correct what you meant to day OR start your voice recording all over again (which can get really long). By using PowerPoint I game myself another option to just re-voice-over that one specific slide, taking much less time and keeping my previous slides as is! This was very helpful when add this part to my presentation.
Another challenge I have faced was trying to display these presentations onto my webpage. With some more Googling I was able to successfully add my video to my Weebly page. Even though much of this project took time, reflection, learning and re-learning, I think in the end I was able to create something that I am proud of and something I will be able to use (and continue to improve) within my organization.
The tools I used to help me create this presentation:
Downloading YouTube videos to computer
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Embedding a PPT into Weebly site
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How Presentation Zen Fixed My Bad PowerPoints
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How to avoid death by PowerPoint | David JP Phillips
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Duarte Design's Five Rules for Presentations | Nancy Duarte
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How to begin your presentation | Simon Sinek
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The Outline & Timeline.
Here is our plan for effective Professional Learning (click on the image below to see the full plan). This plan will be changing and adapting as we are learning, collaborating and developing our plan further. Our goal now is to continue to grow as a team, getting others involved and releasing some of the responsibilities over to others and expanding our own ideas by collaborating on others with this project. We know that to do this, we will need to teach others about how they can support and encourage effective PL. We organized our plan to make sure we are applying the 5 key principles to effective professional development. We also included a the time frame for each task, as long as a space to record collaboration, resources needed, cost, evidence PL is sticking, status of tasks, the audience and their needs per task and links to the resources we will be using. We will continue to add to this resource as our team grows and development of our PD expands.
Resources from Outline
Here you will find the resources listed in the outline. You can use this as a quick link to the resources or click on the links as they appear in the outline. This list will continue to grow as further resources are created and developed.
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING RESOURCES <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
VARIOUS CONTENT RESOURCES <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
SPECIFIC CONTENT RESOURCES <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Comfort Level Teams (links to come)
Grade Level Teams (links to come)
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN RESOURCES <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
District's 6Cs Rubrics
IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCES <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
No additional resources are posted here (yet).
MODELING RESOURCES <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
No additional resources are posted here (yet). This will be where videos of our STEAM lessons will be added to access and learn more.
Visiting Schools in West Michigan already excelling at STEAM. Link to News Article & Video Below
Closing
By using these resources and working as a team to further develop these plans, we will model an Effective PL through STEAM integration. By using this format of PL we want to change future PLs to be more effective for out teachers as well as get teachers to feel comfortable with implementing STEAM and the 6Cs into their classrooms daily.
References
Cult of Pedagogy. (2013). How presentation zen fixed my bad powerpoints. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/vkrl1j0IW-c
EdCan Network Le Reseau EdCan. (2016). Innovation that sticks case study - OCSB: Risk taking. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/UAMcjUzdVnE
Duarte Inc. (2009). Duarte design's five rules for presentations by nancy duarte. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/hT9GGmundag
Golinkoff, R. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2016). Becoming brilliant: What science tells us about raising successful children. APA LifeTools.
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/Professional Development.pdf
[Simple Tutorials]. (2015). How to use 4k video downloader | download videos from youtube/dailymotion/facebook/vimeo/metafe. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/6V1BcL0GgY4
Skillshare. (2015). How to begin your presentation with simon sinek. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/e80BbX05D7Y
Stephanee Stephens. (2013). Embedding a ppt in weebly site. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/FXE5fX2mhi0
[TEXx Talks]. (2014). How to avoid death by powerpoint | david jp phillips | tedxstockholmsalon [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/Iwpi1Lm6dFo
TNTP. (2015). The mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development. Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/view/evaluation-and-development/the-mirage-confronting-the-truth-about-our-quest-for-teacher-development
EdCan Network Le Reseau EdCan. (2016). Innovation that sticks case study - OCSB: Risk taking. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/UAMcjUzdVnE
Duarte Inc. (2009). Duarte design's five rules for presentations by nancy duarte. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/hT9GGmundag
Golinkoff, R. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2016). Becoming brilliant: What science tells us about raising successful children. APA LifeTools.
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/Professional Development.pdf
[Simple Tutorials]. (2015). How to use 4k video downloader | download videos from youtube/dailymotion/facebook/vimeo/metafe. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/6V1BcL0GgY4
Skillshare. (2015). How to begin your presentation with simon sinek. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/e80BbX05D7Y
Stephanee Stephens. (2013). Embedding a ppt in weebly site. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/FXE5fX2mhi0
[TEXx Talks]. (2014). How to avoid death by powerpoint | david jp phillips | tedxstockholmsalon [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/Iwpi1Lm6dFo
TNTP. (2015). The mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development. Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/view/evaluation-and-development/the-mirage-confronting-the-truth-about-our-quest-for-teacher-development