Summer Professional Development

I blogged earlier this summer about Summer Technology Boot Camp. Overall I think it was successful. I won't know for sure until the end of the school year and I ask the participants what they are still doing on the computers and the internet.

Anyway, so far it looks promising. I've had a few people approach me and tell me what they're working on. So far we have at least one teacher who's set up a Ning site for her theater kids, another teacher who's begun creating a Google Form survey for her students to fill out as soon as they get back, and the tech coordinator for our grade school has gotten Google Apps set up and tells me the teachers from the training are going to town.

On the other hand I also have teachers who told me they haven't touched a computer since the training in June. To help these teachers out I've been creating a few short video segments and interspersing them throughout the Google Site I set up for the course. I'm also hoping that those faculty who told me they wanted to attend the workshop but couldn't for some reason or another might be able to benefit as well.

We're not done with the PD yet. We're currently in the planning process for how we will continue it throughout the rest of the school year. Everything I've been reading says PD needs to be going on all the time in order to transform teaching. So we're giving that a try.