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...

I am preparing for my final face-to-face meeting with the two cohorts of middle and high school math teachers I have been working with the past 6 months.  We will still have one more online component, which ends in June. I am a little sad about the fact that our journey is coming to an end, as it has been one of my most rewarding professional development experiences, in large part because I was able to really get to know these teachers both personally and professionally and actually see the progression of change and confidence as they learned and integrated Sketchpad into their mathematics instruction. A quick recap of the five previous face-to-face lessons, or focus you might say: Lesson One: Begin professional development experiences assessing background skills of participants. Lesson Two:  Work on building a sense of community and support among participants, where they feel comfortable sharing their struggles, their experiences, their ideas and expertise. ...

I am in the midst of the fourth online unit with my two teacher cohorts, part of the long-term Sketchpad PD we have been engaged in since December 2011. So far, we have had four face-to-face get-togethers and four online units, which have varied in their length. I have been sharing what I have noticed these past several months as well as the planning I have done based on the feedback and interactions from the online units(see the series listings at the end of this post). What has really struck me, this month in particular, is the focus of all the participants on their students.  I know it seems obvious that a teacher would focus on their students, but what I mean is the actual thought behind what they are teaching, how they are teaching, and how that impacts student understanding. This long-term PD has  focused on technology activities, the math content, the pedagogy, and the Common Core standards, and how all of these components fit together to help students learn and, mo...

In my most recent post in my hybrid PD series, Planning for Hybrid PD (part 4) - Teacher Input I talked about my plans in my next face-to-face meeting with teachers I have been working with for the past four months. My focus was on teacher input and really addressing the needs of the teachers and giving the teachers the control over the content and focus of what we did. Lesson Four: Provide teachers with a choice in what the professional development focuses on..  Let them choose topics of interest, or topics they are struggling with, or topics they feel will be of benefit to their specific content are or their specific students.  By providing choice, you are allowing teachers control over their learning and the ability to make it personal. This provides a sense of empowerment and motivation. Things went well for the most part.  We spent some time, as we always do, sharing what they had done in their classrooms with Sketchpad and lessons .  This is such a g...

I just spent last week with the teachers I have been working with for the last three months on my hybrid/blended PD (my most recent post in the series was Feedback (Part 3) on Hybrid PD ).  I also spent the last part of the week at the Texas Computer Education Association 2012 conference in Austin, TX, where I met with myriad of teachers from all different disciplines and talked about technology and mathematics. In both experiences, I was surrounded by teachers excited about technology, excited about using technology, and teachers who were so excited to engage and provide opportunities for their students to get their hands on learning, whether it be mathematics, science, social studies or English. But...what I also heard was frustration about their ability and access to provide those experiences to their students due to such mundane things as the software not being downloaded on the computers, or the sites they want to go to being blocked by the school firewalls. This had me thin...

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...