Soft Technology

We've ALL been the victims of bad / boring / unoriginal or otherwise unintentionally painful staff development, but where does it go SO WRONG? Here are the top three ways to sink your staff development and some ideas on how to avoid them. Have another top pet peeve or suggestion for improvement? Please leave it in the comments. I can't wait to hear what you think!

Since my first year as a teacher in 1997 I've been deeply interested in how to get students interested in learning what I wanted and needed them to learn. Lately I learned what I was striving for had a name that has become quite the buzz word in education; I wanted students to become ENGAGED. Eventually I developed a knack for understanding what choices left to my students would most likely lead to this state. Each educational book I read, and really each terrible staff development session I attended, helped me refine my understanding of exactly how to design engaging lessons and staff development events.  I want to help you learn to do the same, and to that end, I'm developing a new 3 1/2 day academy to help teachers learn how to get human nature working with them instead of against them. If you want to know more or sign up to get information, please visit http://www.EngageMeAcademy.org   Feel free to download this image, print it out, and use it however you want. There will ...

The biggest problem with staff development is that many times, it doesn't work.  . If you want it to " work ," then you have to work .  . Here are some ideas each of us can implement ourselves (school leaders, you can help!) to make sure our own professional learning sticks. If you've attended staff development with me, and want to do #6, please email me at amy@friedtechnology.com .  Download Printable Action Plan Google Doc Action Plan Download this file in any format you want  here . Use this within your school or district freely, republish freely online with a link back to this page and an acknowledgment of authorship. 

If you're in education, I'm sure you've seen the posts called something like "If Teachers Planned Inservice." The implication is that inservice is always boring (which it often is) and that if teachers did it, it would be either 1. nonexistent or 2. less boring. As a person who plans inservice as part of my job, I hope that what I have planned for you is 1. not boring and 2. useful to you. In fact, that's my number one and number two hope for every session I provide. My question for you though is this: If you are a teacher, you provide a form of "inservice" every day in your classroom. Do you have the same standards for your teaching as you have for mine? I teach you only a few days a year; you teach your students about 185 days a year. How do you maintain the level of interest and relevancy that you expect from me? I'll grant you that's incredibly difficult, but it is worth pondering. What I want you to know is that I (and many, many others...

A couple of smart principals I know (and luckily get to work with frequently) told me that they're going to use Project Based Learning for campus staff development this year. We started brainstorming a Driving Question for this purpose. What do you think? Would you rather have PBL based Back to School staff development? What could we do to improve our DQ? Driving Question: How can you work in a team of 4-5 peers to create a 5-10 minute presentation on an engaging strategy, communication technique, or tool that could be used enhance learning or improve communication in our school? Norms & Expectations: All team members must speak about what they contributed during the presentation . Teaching techniques or scenarios addressed by the teams should be presented in an engaging way and modeled during the presentation. A digital representation or handout that will help your peers remember the technique/tool/idea, etc. must be shared.

Create a staff development project using stickers and clouds and motivate your staff to attend after school trainings. Enjoy! Materials: http://goo.gl/ZbecY