Sunday, October 21, 2007

K12 Online Conference is AWESOME!!!

This is an outstanding professional development opportunity that is going on right now, and it is FREE!!! The conference primarily focuses on what it means to teach and work with the "21st Century Learner." As a result, a large focus of the conference deals with the tools of 21st Century Teaching and Learning. I've watched several of the presentations and came away with many practical and applicable ideas for use here at USM. For example, one of the presenters talked about how special ed teachers in his district are using Google Docs to support the students they are working with. Student share/collaborate their google docs file with their special ed teacher, and the special ed teacher is then able to provide the appropriate scaffolding at every step of the writing process without having to be in the classroom looking over his/her shoulder.

There are many other excellent ideas to mention, but I want to keep this post reasonably short. If you are interested in the K12 Online learning conference, visit: http://www.k12onlineconference.org/ . You can visit the website and watch the presentations any time you want, even after the conference is over. Click the schedule link at the top of the page to see the full schedule of events and to view the presentations.

If you feel inspired by a presentation at the conference, leave a post here at the Middle School Professional Growth Blog (or on your own blog!)

Cheers!
~Matt

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