Carla Smith and I presented our professional development together to two different groups of teachers; K-2 and 3-5. We presented Class Tools to our K-2 teachers and Discovery Education to our 3-5 teachers. As we planned, we joked about the technology level of our K-2 teachers, but they actually turned out to be a great group. We shared a PowerPoint with them about the Class Tools website and what types of activities could be utilized. Carla and I had both used Class Tools before and I shared an example of a Science lesson activity that I had used with my students when studying the human body. Since Class Tools is a web-based program, we showed the K-2 teachers how to create and save a file in a Word document for use with Class Tools. In saving the document, you could reuse the same information in different formats. I love using the Arcade Game Generator and that's what I demonstrated to the teachers. The teachers were able to use the web-site and provided Carla and I with immediate feed back on how they could use this site.
Since I felt comfortable using Class Tools, this presentation helped with my professional growth. The K-2 teachers were very supportive and gave us lots of great suggestions that they would use. If I were to repeat this presentation, I would have the teachers come with materials so that they could "make and take" useful ideas with them.
With the 3-5 teachers, we presented Discovery Education and how you can use it for so much more than videos. We had the teachers explore and go through creating an assignment using the assignment builder. We delivered our initial presentation via the Power Point presentation that was shared with us during summer Pinnacle training. We had shared the Power Point through Google Docs and had some issues with teachers trying to sign in. We had asked that they bring their log-in, but some log-ins did not work. We remedied the situation by showing the entire group the agenda and notes on the Smart Board.
This presentation was more difficult than the K- 2 presentation simply because Carla and I had just learned how to use the assignment builder ourselves. The teachers did like using Discovery Education and were surprised at what all Discovery Education had to offer. If I were to repeat this Professional Development, I think I would have the teachers work together in PLC teams to create their assignments.
Both Professional Developments caused me to be a stronger presenter. The sessions teach you to be prepared for all things and to think on your feet.
