My baby girl was just born and once I pry away from her beautiful little face I would be happy to share, collaborate and make your wiki take off.

Nice one!

J

Do you have links to these anywhere? How can I bribe you to enhance the PD wiki I’ve opened for collaborative input?

I totally agree. Having lead “text book” PD sessions over the years I have found that teachers are more likely to attend when they feel they are learning something that can benefit them “outside of school” as well as inside the classroom. Teachers are the best at making classroom connections. They watch TV and say “hey this show would be perfect for my class. They shop and say “hey this would be perfect for this unit! I have changed the way I market and promote after school PD and as a result, attendance has gone up and people walk away feeling like they are getting something special.

That being said, once I have them in the room, you bet I am embedding all sort of other skills and giving them classroom integration ideas, but they came because they wanted to get “creative” for themselves.

Here are a few samples from last year.

Monday Oct 2nd - Your Digital Living room” - Itunes - Managing your music collection -
Come to this session to learn how to manage all of your music and digitize your library.

Monday October 16th – Taking control of your email – Feeling overwhelmed by the flow of email at ISB? Are you losing emails in your ever increasing inbox? Looking for some tips on how to manage all your email? If you are reading this email, then this session is for you.

Wednesday October 25th – Digital Spring Cleaning - “This will be the most productive 40 min you spend all year” - Come to this session and learn some great strategies on how to manage all of the data on your computer. File away all those lingering items on your desktop and come away feeling like you are organized.

Monday October 30th – “Taking control of your web browser” - Are your bookmarks out of control? Can’t seem to find that great resource you used last year but you remember you bookmarked it SOMEWHERE? - Come to this session to learn advanced strategies on how to manage all of your internet bookmarks and resources.

Wednesday November 22nd – “The ULTIMATE Christmas Gift!! - Looking for a cool Christmas gift for your friends/family back home? This session will focus on getting you to create cool photo albums on your computers and them submitting them for printing. You won’t believe the final product!!

Thursday May 10th – iTunes and iPhoto – Moving from from good to guru.

As your home entertainment centers and photo albums slowly move to a totally digital format come to this session to learn all about how these programs (and programs like them) work and how to organize all of your home or classroom music and photos. Educational Connections: Podcasts, audio books, slideshows, digital presentations, digital portfolios, capturing your students digitally and much much more.

As always you approach this creatively and thoughtfully, and extend my learning.

Lots to think about here.

One thing we did in our workshop yesterday was do some brainstorming about what teachers do and don’t like about staff development experiences they’ve had in the past, and then had them brainstorm how they themselves learn.

We applied that to students as well, but also will use that information to help us craft a new staff development option we have on our campus this year.

It’s a little more “fixed” time wise than might fit your idea, but lots of what they had to say about having choices for different intelligences and ability levels enters into your idea for a survey.

Anyway, thanks for the followup ideas, and I’m going to posting about our sessions as well.

Thanks!