Unit Description:
Our goal as teachers, is to ensure that each and every student is college or career ready, by the time they leave our school. Our students are digital natives, and their teachers, for the most part, are digital immigrants. The economies and global nature of the world, drive the need to ensure that technology and 21st Century learning skills are threaded throughout the curriculum. Student Personal Learning Plans provide opportunities for us to upgrade, not only our content and assessments, but also the skills, necessary for students to be ready for careers, which do not even exist currently. Therefore, six Professional Development sessions have been designed, to educate teachers about the many different ways they can use their Chromebooks to upgrade their lesson plans, and transform learning for our students in the 9th - 12th grades.
Timelines for Virtual and Blended Learning Sessions:
Connect Directly to the Learning Plan Here
I. Virtual Learning Opportunity: PD Sessions and Timeline via virtual learning through this website, at your own pace, however no later than October 31, 2015
II. PD Sessions and Timeline for PD Sessions at school:
Professional Development Sessions are lessons, based upon Barbara Stripling's Model of Inquiry (Stripling, 2003):
1. Connect and Gain Background Knowledge (August 19, 2015 in the library) ~ What is a Personalized Learning Plan? What technological skills do I already possess? How do I use technology currently in the classroom? Why is it important to upgrade my curriculum with technology?
2. Wonder ~ (September 2, 2015 in the library) In what ways can I connect my curriculum to student learning plans, personalize the learning for my students in my content area?
3. Investigate: (September 16, 2015 in the library) PD Participants will search for relevant, authoritative, and high quality information. A minimum of 15 resources are to be used. These resources are to be evaluated according to information literacy standards. Digital citizenship and the ethical use of resources will be reviewed. Make predictions, and continue to ask questions, to determine how you can do your best, to help each and every student personalize their learning. Think about other ways you may be able to connect your classroom content with the PLP's.
4. Construct: (September 30, 2015 in the library) PD Participants will construct a unit in PD session five, which threads technology throughout, to differentiate student learning opportunities, and upgrade their curriculum. The unit will incorporate technology in each of the following steps of inquiry process (Barbara Stripling, 2003), transforming learning and providing students opportunities to:
- Connect (Gain background knowledge and connect to prior knowledge)
- Wonder (Develop questions, make predictions, and hypothesize)
- Investigate (Access information, evaluate it, test hypothesis, think about new questions and hypotheses)
- Construct (organize ideas and synthesize, and draw conclusions and hypotheses)
- Express (knowledge)
- Reflect (Upon ones own learning)
5. Express: (October 14, 2015 in the library) Construct a unit for students, following Barbara Stripling's inquiry process, which connects classroom content with student Personalized Learning Plans, while simultaneously upgrading your curriculum with technology.
6. Reflect: (November 4, 2015 in the library) Teachers must reflect on their own learning, using technology in the construction of a unit, which connects classroom content with student Personalized Learning Plans, while simultaneously upgrading your curriculum with technology.