"Creativity is contagious, pass it on." ~Albert Einstein

Sunday, January 19, 2014

The PD Challenge

I recently blogged about how I had begun creating App Task Challenges for the teachers in our district.  The challenges have been well received and I think teachers actually enjoy the process of completing the challenges and then having an idea on how to easily integrate an app into their curriculum.

One of my responsibilities as the Integration Specialist for our district is to plan professional development focused on technology for the third Wednesday of each month.  To tell you the truth, it's tough to provide valuable, authentic tech trainings to a large group of teachers at one time.  I have showed our teachers how to use Twitter, Skype, Google Apps for Education, etc., but it was always in a large group, and I struggled to keep it engaging and valuable.  The last thing I want to do is waste a teachers time. 

I wanted our teachers to be active, moving, collaborating, designing. I began thinking that I could achieve these results by creating a "challenge" for our PD day.  I came up with a challenge in which teachers (in their PLC's) had to create a 30 second public service announcement using the iMovie app.  Their topic:  "How To..."   Click here to see the details of the challenge.    When we went 1:1 with iPads a year ago we installed the iMovie app on all of our teacher and student devices.  I wanted this challenge to provide our teachers an opportunity to learn how to use the iMovie app.   I love the creation possibilities with this iMovie and it's so easy to use! 

Our teachers did an AWESOME job!  You can see some of the examples below.  I have a read a lot of banter on Twitter lately about transforming the traditional "sit and get" PD to something more meaningful and valuable.  It is my hope that teachers that weren't using the iMovie app previously, now see how easy it is to create a simple product using iMovie. 

Steal this idea, take it to your administration team.  YOU create the challenge (just use this one) and let your teachers create!   




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