Professional Development
Included on this page are: video clips to inspire thought and discussion and disagreement, podcasts about history, professional development websites, and tools to help enhance our curriculum. Everything was chosen to enhance our reflective practice and add to our department's existing commitment to ongoing professional development.
TED Talk- Amy Burvall & Herb Mahelona
"What I Learned from Napoleon and MTV"
This is a TED Talk by the pair behind the Historyteachers YouTube music videos.
TED Talk- Jane McGonigal
"Gaming Can Make A Better World"
An inspiration point for Parkinson and Benard's NHCSS presentation, about gaming, empathy, and education.
RSA Animated- Changing Education Paradigms
Sir Ken Robinson explores coming changes in education and why they are necessary and unavoidable.
RSA Animated- 21st Century Enlightenment
Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, how the idea might help us meet the challenges we face today, and the role that can be played by organisations
Formative Assessment/Evaluation
One Ph.D. candidate's explanation of formative assessment ("formative evaluation"), using mainly the research of Paul Black and Dylan William's article "Inside the Black Box."
What is 21st Century Education?
Short piece about what it means to provide a 21st Century classroom (hint, it's not all about the integration of technology).
History Podcasts
Professional Websites
-
Educators Professional Development is the largest online database of professional development conferences and workshops for educators and teachers from Early Learning to Grade 12.
-
ASCD is a membership organization that develops programs, products, and services essential to the way educators learn, teach, and lead.
-
MyNHDOE sign-on page, where you can keep track of your certification and state testing. Here is the PDF manual for the system (it might be a needed tool).
-
Curriculum21 (Heidi Hayes Jacobs) site about technology and global studies integration into the curriculum.
-
Literacy Websites for Students Grade 9-12 is a listing of a variety of sites that can be used to boost literacy skills in the classroom.
-
MyLearningPlan- This is the site that we are using for professional development and leave forms starting with the 2012-2012 school year.
-
Common Core Standards- This website is a listing for the Social Studies related Common Core Standards (9-10 & 11-12).
-
Simple K-12- With the catchphrase PD in your PJs, Simple K-12 provides days worth of professional development webinars, tons of shared resources, and entire pd courses on a plethora of topics.
Tools to Enhance the Curriculum
- Wix- This site was created using Wix, it is an easy to use site (and free), requiring only a basic understanding of cutting and pasting and an email address. Students really enjoy creating their projects on this tool. Here is a link to an AP US project that was created by Bradley Schaefer ('13), using Wix, called "Peace through Music."
- TED Ed- Newly created site from TED Talks, this is an education focused website that has videos, quizzes, resources, and design tools to enhance the curriculum of our schools. The already created lessons can be "flipped" to add/take out features to fit you classroom, and there is a place where you can create a new online lesson based on any YouTube video.
- Free Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE)- Government website designed to provide a vast number of free resources for teachers across the disciplines. They describe the site as "More than 1,500 federally supported teaching and learning resources are included from dozens of federal agencies. New sites are added regularly."
- Homeworknow- Online homework retrieval system for students and repository for teachers, this can be a useful tool, especially if you take the time to upload project sheets and larger assignments.
- Wikispaces- More difficult to use than Wix, and sometimes blocked by Websense, this site lets students create shared websites with relative ease.
- Pinterest- This is an online bulletin board that features a plethora of images and links, what is nice is that you can create "boards" for a particular class to view or you can search through for particular images (or pop culture ideals. The down sides are that you need the free membership (which can sometimes be delayed) and there is no control over comments or content (some images are not appropriate). Great database of images and quotes though.
- Edmodo- A site that looks like Facebook, but is designed with teachers, students, and parents in mind. You can set up classes, converse back and forth, post videos/Power Points, set up libraries, etc. This worked well for AP because the students could be trusted to behave. Teacher has moderator power and control over password reset.
- Sheppard Software- Although the look is quite juvenile, the results have shown that our students are not only enjoying this tool, but also learning quite a bit.
- Free Rice- A vocabulary/art/math based game that rewards the students with grains of rice for each question answered correctly (and instructive feedback for incorrect answers). The rice is donated to those in need, and the students/classes can be set up in competitive teams online.
- Google Scholar- A version of the Google search that only shows scholarly articles, great tool to use in research projects.
- Glogster- A poster making site designed to help organize thoughts, once the students get the hang of it, it is pretty simple to use (though limited to the size of the final result).
- Prezi- A moving poster presentation maker that allows students to create a 2d presentation and then guide the viewer in and out of the words and pictures.
- Teacher Tube- An education-based offshoot of YouTube, designed to focus just on videos for the classroom. Some have links to lesson plans and handouts, some are very weak. This is a minimal site, when compared to YouTube, but worth checking out.
- Matt and Amy's Gamer's Classroom- Shameless plug for the work that Matt and Amy did for the NHCSS conference about the integration of video games into the classroom. This site has some links to an assortment of online and console games to help augment instruction.
- Open Culture bills itself as harnessing "The best free cultural & educational media on the web." The site has links to free movies, documentaries, youtube clips, audiobooks, textbooks, courses, language lessons, ebooks... It's a clearinghouse for a lot of resources. Go check it out.
- QuizStar is a free online quiz creator/giver. It prints out beautiful reports, and you can share quizzes between teachers.
Professional Books
-
Ciaccio, Joseph. (2004). Totally Positive Teaching: A five-step approach to energizing students and teachers.
-
Erwin, Jonathan C. (2004). The Classroom of Choice: Giving students what they need and getting what you want.
-
Wolff, Fred S. and Kalna, Lynna Garber. (2010). The Write Direction: A new teacher's practical guide to teaching writing and its application to the workplace.
-
Dougherty, Eleanor. (2012). Assignments Matter: Making the connections that help students meet standards.
Conference Notes
- Writing in the Common Core (12/11/12 at SERESC): Fred Wolff and Lynna Garber Kalna day-long conference on what the new Writing Common Core Standards are, and what they require of schools. These notes are taken during from their presentation, and Fred and Lynna own all the orginal work.