Personalized PD: Finding webinars

As I spend a little time talking about personalized PD, it is only appropriate to share the concept of the webinar as a way to grow professionally.  Over the past few years, webinars have become one of the fastest ways of learning material and personalizing what is learned.  There is a lot of picking and choosing and a lot of options for many different content areas, grades and educators.

I have found several fantastic sites that offer PD webinars.  Some sites charge a fee to be a member, but they have free sessions from time to time. I do those free days like they are going out of style. My kids make fun of me because I am doing another webinar.  But, some of them are outstanding.   I have found a lot of good tools on the simplek12 website as well as edweb.net.   Both do webinars often and all of them have been great quality.  I have learned a lot of new things through both.

I have also found several archived unconferences with webinars too. (An unconference is a virtual conference where people all over the globe get together and go over various topics.  I have seen some through teacher2.0 and library2.0.  A few conferences have been archived, you just have to search for them.  They are all over the internet.

I recommend looking into these free webinars if you want to personalize PD for yourself.  It is very possible to customize what you want to learn.  I do a lot over the summer so when I go back to school I am fresh and ready to go.  I have taken a lot of information from these webinars and used them in my classroom, library and with colleagues.

Personalized PD: Twitter

Often as educators, we are called to a staff development and hear about the newest trend, data that pertains to a small group of people and very irrelevant to others.  Yes, learning about math data is important to the staff as a whole, but, if there was a way as a teacher we could grow personally and develop our own PD, I think we as a whole can become better educators.

There are many ways, as educators, we can personalize our staff development and these are the ways you can do it:

Twitter:
If you are not on twitter, you should be.  Twitter is by far one of the most powerful ways to learn and grow as a professional.  If you spend 10 minutes from time to time glancing and reading what people post, you will learn something new.  I had a teacher ask me for some insight to a topic.  I went to my twitter, posted a quick question and in a matter of five minutes, I had close to 10 responses with suggestions.   WOW!  Who would have thought five years ago that something that powerful would be available at our fingertips.  (For more information about personalizing PD with twitter, please check this link and read this material.)  Select a few hashtags (#) and watch them from time to time.  There are a lot of programs that allow you to follow the chat, some even allow for an archive so you can go back and see it later.

Here are some fantastic education chats and links to places you should visit to learn more about twitter for education:
The Cybraryman:   This site is a plethora of information for everyone in education.  The link here is for Twitter and it includes a lot of informational pieces for you.  He has established a schedule of all of the education chats out there and the times. (PLEASE DON'T BE OVERWHELMED) There are many of them, but only a few may pertain to your needs.

Here are the ones I personally attend from time to time:
#edchat  (Tuesdays at 7pm)  Lots of fantastic ed topics.
#INeLearn (Thursdays at 8pm)  Directed by IN-DOE department of eLearning.  Excellent source of information.  Topics vary weekly. (Every state has their own, I follow Indiana's since I live in the Hoosier state.)
#edtechchat (Mondays at 8pm) Focus on educational technology.

Are you looking for some people to follow?  Everyone listed here are a good start of who should  be followed on Twitter.  As you follow these folks' posts, you will see more people to follow.  If you are looking for content specific people, ask it on Twitter, someone will help you.:
Jerry Blumengarten                                             edweb.net
ISTE                                                                 Kimberly Munoz
Edtechtalk                                                         Sara Hunter
Angela Maiers                                                   Larry Ferlazzo
Matt Miller                                                     
Michelle Green
George Couros
INeLearning
Chris Casal
Connected Educators Project
Shelly Terrell
Edudemic
Will Richardson
Kathy Schrock
Adam Bellow
Pam Moran
Richard Byrne
Erin Klein
SimpleK12
Vicki Davis

Implementing Tech Tuesdays

I decided my annual Professional Development goal was to start implementing a voluntary tech training for teachers each week to show them tools that can benefit their classrooms.  We are a 1:1 school, but often our teachers are leery about using the technology beyond just typing papers because they aren't well trained to utilize more.

I started my blog hoping they would read from time to time and find interest in something I talk about.  I also started some different bookmarks for them and an edtech edmodo page just for our staff.  I still hear from kids, however, that not all of their teachers use the computers.  This is a reason for concern.  I thought that perhaps doing  Tech Tuesday and sharing a simple tool at their own accord would be a better way to get some PD out there and also let them realize how simple it is to use technology in their classroom.  Every single teacher in a 1:1 school can find at least one tool to use that benefits kids. That is my goal with the Tech Tuesdays.

Here is what I decided to do.  We are a multi device school.  Lower grades use iPads and the upper grades use computers.  I needed to find tools to share that potentially could be used for both devices. I spent time looking at my pocket, my scoop.it and my Diigo and started checking out the different tweets I have favorited from some of the connected educators in my PLN.  I considered for a bit the tools that would best suit people from the beginning of the year and things that could be tossed in midway.  

I chose Edmodo as my premier training.  It's easy, crosses both devices and can be used by everyone.  I moved through my list and got the entire first semester planned.  I even cleared it with my superintendent to offer 1 PGP point for every three trainings. (I anticipate them only lasting 15-20 minutes because people aren't going to want to spend their entire prep period.  They are more than likely going to want to take the training and then spend a little time familiarizing themselves with it.

I am hoping that this attempt to train teachers to use tools will be a positive experience for everyone involved.  I am excited to see how many people take note and try new things!