Greenhaus Education and Other "Effects"

Learning Pod at LWF 2012 Conference I have just returned from a week in Scotland and London, some of it personal vacation and some of it professional growth on my part, as I attended the Learning without Frontiers conference in London.  That experience in itself was amazing - listening to so many great speakers (Noam Chomskey, Sir Ken Robinson, Conrad Wolfram, etc.).  I will be posting some reflections on those talks at a later time, after I have had some time to reflect and gather my thoughts on what they said.  Overall, my time in the UK last week was just an incredible experience on so many levels but as I am still suffering from jet lag, I think it best to hold off on sharing those experiences! I did want to update on the hybrid PD I am working on - we are currently in our second online Unit and it is not going as well as I had hoped, as I still am struggling with participation from many folks in both cohorts.  As I posted in my Part 1 piece, I had made so...

Just completed my second round of face-to-face workshops with my two cohorts I am doing my blended learning professional development with on Sketchpad and technology integration in mathematics. In my previous postings ( Planning for Hybrid PD , Follow Up Day 1, follow Up Day 2, Online Community Part 1 , Planning for Hybrid PD Part 2 ), I have been documenting this professional development experience, sharing my planning process as well as what has been happening in the face-to-face and online components as these groups move forward.  The ultimate goal by the end of this process is that these teachers have not only learned the software, but more importantly, have learned  to integrate Sketchpad into classroom instruction to help their students learn mathematics in an engaging way that improves student understanding and achievement in mathematics.  This week we met face-to-face after teachers had a month+ online to try some activities on their own to help lea...

In my first posting, Planning for Hybrid PD - Comfort Level and Confidence First  I shared my thoughts on how I planned to start a long-term hybrid Sketchpad professional development that is combining monthly face-to-face meetings with continued online learning and support. My first lesson was as follows: 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 purpose behind what they will be doing, and know where and how they can get continued support. In my first face-to-face meetings, I did my best to follow Lesson One, assessing the needs, providing the necessary tools,etc. You can read more details about that in my reflection posts related to both the first and second face-to-face meetings ( Day 1 and  Day 2 ), as well as the first online unit . I am now planning for our s...

http://bostinno.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/05/community1.jpg My first thoughts are that it is NEVER a good idea to start something new with teachers, especially an online learning environment, right before the holidays!  Of course, I did not have a choice in the matter, so we are going to plug on, but unfortunately I think the fact that everyone is definitely in vacation mode is hindering some of the online community development that should be happening at this point. In my previous posts related to the hybrid PD I am working on for the next several months, Planning for Hybrid PD , Follow-up Day 1 , and Follow-up Day 2 , I reflected on what I planned to do in the face-to-face and gave some insight about what actually happened.  It has now been two weeks since my two cohorts have started their first online component and I wanted to share some thoughts on how that is progressing so far. I have posted a couple of course announcements (these automatically go to all parti...