Communicate » Professional Development

Social networking for educators

ckendall — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:15:33 +0000

I’m doing a two-part learning lunch series for my staff on social networking. Many of my staff are, shall we say, experienced educators, and have not experienced social networking or even be able to describe it. So during the first part we are looking at what is social networking, and next week is how is social networking used in education. This will be interesting! Learning Lunch Launch Sheet (PDF)

80+ Participants in Integrating Tech Workshop

ckendall — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:27:09 +0000

Wow! Over 80 people chose to attend the Integrating Technology into Instructional Practice workshop. Thank goodness I had assistance from my University of Michigan Computer Science Engineering Freshmen son Bryan – he was invaluable providing help connecting to our secure network and just-in-time support. It was an exciting, fast-paced workshop exploring multiple authoring environments that could be used in teaching and learning. The participants were a dynamic group, they brainstormed many possible ways to integrate the technologies we explored in their practice. I’ll be updating the wiki page later tonight with their ideas. Thank you participants for sharing your energy, ideas and excitement!

ACTFL 2009: Off to the house of the mouse

ckendall — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:56:13 +0000

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages national conference is at the Swan and Dolphin in Orlando. The program looks interesting and it is always invigorating to meet with fellow educators for discussion and networking. I’ll be presenting two hands-on technology-focused workshops: Integrating Technology into Instructional Practice (6 hours) and Enter the Conversation: Beginning Blogging for Teachers and Students (3 hours). Working with practicing teachers is always exciting – plant the seeds and watch the ideas generate! Are you going to ACTFL? In 2009 ACTFL is in San Diego and the call for proposals is already open.

Michigan World Language Association Conference

ckendall — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:07:43 +0000

The Michigan World Language Association conference is starting tomorrow. The Holiday Inn South in Lansing is the location – it is centrally located, free parking, and easy to reach for many educators from the east and west sides of the state. Hope to see you there!

Starting the new school year with web2.0 in New Jersey

ckendall — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:46:28 +0000

I just returned from New Jersey where I worked with 36 world language teachers for 4 days. We focused on enhancing world language teaching and learning with web-based technologies. We had a wiki that served as our starting point (see the Explore page), and then each participant had a workspace (see Participants page), and many went on to develop their own wikis for the upcoming school year (listed beside their workspace on the Participant page).

While we primarily focused on the tools, there was some discussion on the pedagogy – however it was more implicit than explicit – the trouble with such as short time together and the way the 4 days were structured. It was interesting to work with such a large group, as there are teachers all along the technology adoption-integration spectrum. Some are simply recreating existing practice via technology and are still rather teacher-centered, while others are innovating and thinking very creatively and having the students be the creators of personalized, media-rich content.

They are an energetic group with great ideas – many have set up their own wikis, others are working on projects in VoiceThread, and some have even set up collaborative projects with each other’s classrooms via Skype. The New Jersey Department of Education will be holding follow-up events throughout the year, and hopefully there will be some exemplary lessons emerge from this group.

During our 4 days, excitement was generated by…

How easy it is to create a wiki and embed media to it so it can serve as a space for the teacher as professional as well as a creative space for students, and how flexible it is with the discussion option.
The potential for VoiceThread in the world language classroom as both a teacher tool and a student tool. Some enjoyed the web-based authoring environments in tools such as Comiqs.
How easy it is to use Skype and the possibilities for collaboration via webcam.
The ease of creating a Google Docs Form and embedding it on a page to quickly collect data such as student information and then use the widgets to help visualize that data.

I look forward to hearing how the 2008-09 year goes as these teachers experiment with new technologies in their personal and professional practice!

NFLRC at Iowa State receives StarTalk Grant!

ckendall — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:39:11 +0000

The National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center at Iowa State University received a StarTalk grant for a special professional development institute for Chinese teachers to take place during the summer of 2008, Mentoring and Leadership for K-12 Chinese Teachers.

In this 10-day summer institute, K-12 Chinese teachers will explore key concepts and principles related to mentoring, leadership, and change. They will collaboratively develop standards-based, thematically focused, and culturally rich Chinese teaching materials and experiment with compelling classroom applications of emerging technologies such as blogs, podcasts, digital storytelling, and wikis. They will learn to use these technologies to disseminate materials and expand their mentoring and leadership to the profession at district and state levels.

Cherice Montgomery and I will be leading the institute, and Weiqing Wang, the Chinese cultural and linguistic consultant and demonstration teacher will be joining our team! Kudos to Marcia Rosenbusch, Director of the NFLRC, on receiving the grant. Marcia continues providing excellent direction to the Center as well as leadership and mentoring to colleagues and fellow world language educators.

Off to the ACTFL conference

ckendall — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:38:48 +0000

Leaving next week for the ACTFL conference in San Antonio, Tx. The first part of the week I’ll be in Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) training, then I’ll be presenting a session and a workshop with my friend Cherice. Of course the presentations aren’t quite finished – I’ll try to remember and post the urls – we are presenting on wikis and 21st century tech toys in the world language classroom.