Greenhaus Education and Other "Effects"

I am feeling like a proud parent after my final face-to-face meeting with my two teacher cohorts.  After 6 months together, this final meeting was all about them sharing what they each have been doing in their classrooms with Sketchpad and Sketchpad LessonLink and focusing on Common Core Standards while integrating technology into math instruction. Just like a parent, I merely started them on the path and guided as needed. They, through personal motivation and interest as well as with the support and guidance from each other, have personalized what they have learned, adapted it to fit their needs, and shown change not only in skills but in confidence about teaching the Common Core Standards, teaching with technology, and listening to their students and helping students deepen mathematical understanding. From my most recent post , my final lesson was: Lesson Six: Provide the opportunity for sharing, presentation and peer feedback to model the professionalism, collaboration, a...

This week I meet for the fifth face-to-face with my two Sketchpad cohorts. It's only been 3 weeks since our last face-to-face meeting and it is also the beginning of their spring break, so planning for this week has been interesting, since I know their minds will be elsewhere! As I posted in last weeks online community development posting (part 4) , the teachers have really begun to think about student needs as they consider using Sketchpad and the Common Core Standards, so I want to continue to foster that in our face-to-face meeting.  As I did last time, I had participants make suggestions of content/topics they wished to focus on in this weeks face-to-face. Our content focus, based on their input, will be on learning some more about the multiple-representational capabilities of Sketchpad as well as some of the animation capabilities. In addition to teacher input as I planned, I also really wanted to think about addressing student needs, since in their online discussion for...

I am in the third online unit of my hybrid/blended PD so wanted to give some feedback and updates on how things are going online.  For those of you who have been following my hybrid/blended professional development series on integrating technology into math instruction (see a listing of all posts in the series at the bottom of this blog), you will remember that we just finished our third face-to-face meeting a couple weeks ago. My focus for this third unit (both f2f & online) is relevancy: Lesson Three: Make the activities and learning relevant to the teachers every-day teaching practice. By providing activities that focus on learning the skills, how to integrate technology appropriately, and also cohere to the specific content and curriculum the teachers must follow, it is more likely that they will begin to change their own practice. If they can see the relevancy to their own daily experience, they are going to be more willing to implement new tools and strategies....

In my most recent post in my hybrid/blended PD series, Planning for Hybrid PD (part 3) - Make it Relevant , I was about to embark on my 3rd face-to-face meeting with the teachers. I have met with the groups and have to say, I think relevancy was definitely the thing to focus on, for two reasons. 1) After almost 3 months working together, with 2 previous face-to-face meetings and 2 online components, the teachers are feeling comfortable with each other and really willing to voice their frustrations, ask for help or ideas, and share strategies. 2) They feel much more comfortable with the software themselves and are actually thinking of how it could work with their students, so they are want lessons that fit what they teach, since that's an easier stretch as they try something new. How did these two reasons fit into my goal for this third face-to-face meeting of making it relevant?  As I said previously Lesson Three: Make the activities and learning relevant to the teachers every-d...

This week is my third face-to-face set of meetings with the two groups of teachers I have been embarking with in the hybrid, or blended, professional development journey. We are focused on learning and integrating dynamic mathematics into math instruction using The Geometer's Sketchpad . We are just coming off our 2nd online unit, about to start our 3rd cycle.  This particular online unit was significantly shorter (3 weeks) compared to the first one (5 weeks), so a much quicker turn-around (my feedback on that can be found in my last online community posting). In my first two parts of this series on blended learning, I went into each face-to-face workshop with specific lesson or goal to focus on: From Planning for Hybrid PD (Part 1): Lesson One: Begin a professional development experience assessing the background skills of participants.Ensure they are given the necessary tools, starting points, and resources to feel comfortable with what they are going to be doing, see the ...

I am going to spend a couple days with teachers this week introducing them to Sketchpad , Sketchpad LessonLink and online learning .  We are starting a 7-month long hybrid professional development experience designed to provide long-term, sustained learning for integrating technology into math instruction. This means once-a-month get togethers to collaborate and share the experiences and student artifacts of what happened in the classroom as they implement lessons, and then month-long online components designed to continue the collaboration and learning of both the software and instructional strategies.  I am excited about starting this, and find myself going over and over all the things I know are needed.  The research I have been immersed in lately, as well as my own personal experiences providing professional development for teacher over the past 18 years, has given me much food for thought and experiences I think will go a long way in helping me provide an experience...

In my posting on Wednesday regarding a 2-hour Sketchpad workshop I was doing, entitled "How to do a 2-hour Technology Professional Development" , I listed four basic things that in that short amount of time would be important to do: Inspire, Relate, Practice, Support. Let me now share the REALITY of what happened in my 2-hour workshop.  Already, not an ideal situation with only 2 hours.  However, it gets worse.  Those of you who are teachers and have attended any professional development will be able to relate to this: the 2 hours turned into 1 hour and 15 minutes because the district whole-group session prior to the break-out sessions didn't end on time - so good-bye 30 minutes.  And then, of course, all break out sessions were told to end 15 minutes early so participants could fill out evaluations.  So...down to 75 minutes.....to train teachers on Sketchpad .....with the expectation they will start using it after the session. Ha! But, the show must go ...