NYLA SSL Conference Spring 2012

Thanks to NYLA/SSL for inviting us to present at the spring 2012 conference in Binghamton, NY last week.  We had a nice sized group for our Friday afternoon session - Professional ePortfolios: What, Why & How? 

Thank goodness we arrived a bit early.  We learned that changing the resolution on some computers is not as easy as on others.  It was a bit tricky getting our own computer on the Internet after the Thursday storms, but after a bit of perseverance, all worked out well.  We eagerly await feedback from the attendees so that we can continue to refine our practice and improve our offerings.  The group asked plenty of great questions, and truly seemed to engage with the idea of ePortfolios for themselves, their teachers and their students.  Don't forget you can link to the presentation via our website:  http://www.nextgennowpd.com/ and please feel free to add your comments to this post to offer any feedback or ask any questions that have surfaced since Friday.  You can also reach us by email:  nextgennow@nextgennowpd.com!  We look forward to hearing from you.

Eastern Upstate Teacher Center Consortium Spring 2012

A View from The Woods in Inlet

Thank you to the Eastern Upstate Teacher Center Directors for inviting us to join you at your Spring Consortium.  We enjoyed shifting to the Common Core with all of you and hope you were able to take away some ideas, strategies and tools for implementation in support of your teachers. The evening at The Woods was lovely. To the right is a picture we took from the shoreline just before dinner.  Absolutely breathtaking! 

As we all make the shifts to the Common Core, we begin to realize that we already have many things in place, and the "shifts" are not quite as daunting as we may have thought.  There is still plenty to learn, but if we can set aside some of the things that we already have in place, we realize we are not "reinventing the wheel," but rather adding a bit of air in hopes of creating more effective and efficient journey for our students and ourselves. 

APPR, Common Core, SLO.... It is all a bit overwhelming. Teachers will certainly need the safety and support zone that Teacher Centers can provide as they take on these new challenges to their already hectic professional lives.

A tool is just a tool until...

 We have titled our first two NGN courses Beyond Cool: Meaningful Technology Integration for a reason!  Our focus is not on the tools we share, but beyond them.  Our goal is to provide resources and initiate professional discussions that help educators learn the most effective ways to incorporate any technology in their instruction in a meaningful way.  Any Web 2.0 tool can be used as a gimmick. It is the pedagogy and planning that allows students to have fun and activate their critical thinking skills at the same time. Therefore, each of our sessions requires teachers to create and share a lesson they will teach in their classrooms based on the ideas we present and the discussion that follows.  Then, we ask our teacher-students to provide each other with meaningful feedback.  We have been so impressed with the level of discussion in which our class participants engage.  It is so great to see teachers collaborating to make their instruction the best that it can be for students.  Students and learning! That's what it is all about, right?