The first opportunity is not really PD, but it is a great "feel good" activity. Diane Ravitch, the “best living historian of education” (Washington Post) and America's “soberest, most history-minded education expert” (Wall Street Journal)," gave a speech, The Future of Public Education, that "analyzed the current state of American education—what’s broken and what are the best ways to fix it." The event was sponsored by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters on March 8, 2011. Her presentation and the Q&A session have been archived here. If you need a lift for your spirits, get a 90 minute pep talk.. . . . . . . . . .
In January WEMTA's Wired Wednesday webinar was 21st Century Assessments by Naomi Harm. Wow!!! Naomi shared a wealth of online resources to help 21st century educators develop checklists, rubrics, and open-text assessments as well as a wealth of databases with many, many high quality ready-made assessments which can also be modified for personal use. This webinar is archived, but you must be a WEMTA member to access the archive and resources. I was most impressed with the 21st century teaching methods used by Naomi Harms to present this webinar. It is worthwhile just to see how professional development can be presented let alone the content that is presented.
There are two upcoming Wired Wednesday webinars: April 13th - Internet Safety & May 11th - Intellectual Freedom. Register here. Free for all WEMTA members. All previous webinars are also available in the archive.
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On March 7, 2011 the TL Virtual Cafe hosted a webinar, A Sweet Way to Search the Web. The presentors were Shannon Miller, a teacher librarian, and Mark Moran, the founder of Dulcinea Media. Dulcinea's "mission is to help change the reality that most students cannot effectively conduct research on the Internet." Several search engines known as SweetSearch have been developed to help students, teachers, and librarians find the best resources which have been evaluated and approved.
TL Virtual Cafe will be offering these upcoming webinars: Copyright Clarity, March 14th; Screenagers and the Digital Window, April 4th; Diving into Digital Books -- Adding eReaders to your School Library, May 2nd; and DIY Summer Reading List, June 6th.
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Don't Copy That 2, a webinar by Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) was presented through edWeb.net on March 8th. SIIA's updated anti-software-piracy video was screened and Q&A's followed. Here's a link to the presentation including the live chat. The video and teaching resources can be downloaded here.
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EDWEB.NEt's Invitation:If you are a teacher, administrator, librarian, or professional working in any level of education, join edWeb to create communities for collaboration - it's free.
edWeb is a great networking site for educators. There a lots of different communities for sharing, discussing, and learning from others with the same interests. The categories range from all curricular areas to higher ed to administration with everything in between. I highly recommend Using Emerging Technology to Advance Your School Library Program community, which has a monthly webinar and they are all archived. I also belong to the Exploring eBooks for K-12 community. Some days my mailbox is full of messages from the discussion forums especially after a webinar. Participating in edWeb is great way to enlarge your professional learning network.
