The Best Teachers Are Lifelong Learners: A roundup of online professional development resources for educators

In our fast-paced world, professional development remains more relevant for teachers than ever. Between evolving curriculums, the changes in how education is delivered, a growing focus on mental health and social-emotional learning and technological advances, teachers have a lot on their plates.

Beyond simply remaining informed on the latest breakthroughs in education and fulfilling requirements, there are additional benefits for teachers who stay engaged in their own learning. A rigorous professional development track can add to teacher satisfaction and retention, particularly in a time when schools are seeing teacher shortages. And, it’s not just the teachers and administrations that benefit from hearty professional development; research indicates that students experience significantly higher levels of achievement when their teachers engage in substantial professional development.

While in-person professional development offers unique benefits, the increase in asynchronous learning opportunities enables teachers to incorporate professional development into their schedules without missing school. It also means that the options for professional development can be overwhelming; below, we’ve rounded up a few standouts.

Google For Education

We’ll start by highlighting a few of our partners, who offer a wealth of professional development opportunities for educators. In addition to its certification programs, Google For Education delivers free online training on important topics like digital citizenship and online safety and using technology to increase accessibility in the classroom. Google For Education also runs the Certified Innovator program, which focuses on helping visionary educators develop their passion projects.

Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies partners with school districts to provide them with customized professional development. Their offerings include a suite of online training which includes courses like Authentic Student Learning & Gamification and how educators can harness social media to expand their professional networks.

Microsoft Learn Educator Center

The Microsoft Learn Educator Center hosts a range of professional development courses. Courses include Support Social and Emotional Learning with Microsoft Tools, which gives teachers tools to foster social and emotional skills and Mindfulness in Minecraft: Education Edition, which emphasizes the intersection of Minecraft and mindfulness. Microsoft Learn’s Educator Center also offers tracks on accessibility and inclusivity and student-centered learning.

National Geographic

For those interested in the sciences and nature, National Geographic offers free professional development courses for teachers. Class options include Geo-Inquiry, National Geographic’s take on project-based learning, as well as lessons focusing on storytelling and photography and teaching climate change.

Next Gen Personal Finance

Next Gen Personal Finance, an organization that promotes incorporating financial literacy and education into public schools, offers a variety of courses for teachers interested in promoting financial education. Topics include budgeting, understanding and managing credit and behavioral economics.

Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network

For educators interested in mental health and social-emotional learning, check out the Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network. In partnership with the National Center for School Mental Health, they offer a free online class featuring modules covering topics like the impact of trauma on learning, mental health literacy and stigma reduction and strategies for supporting students experiencing adversity.

6 Fun Ways to Learn a New Language

Did you know December is Learn a Foreign Language Month? While it’s not realistic to master a new language in only a month, December could be a time to commit to resuscitating your rusty high school French skills or to finally start learning Portuguese.

The benefits of learning a foreign language have long been touted; research has even suggested that becoming bilingual might help protect our brains from cognitive decline associated with aging. Beyond the physical benefits, learning a new language broadens our horizons and allows us the opportunity to connect with new people.

It can be daunting, though, to figure out where to find the time to devote to taking on a foreign language. Fortunately, technology offers us more ways to learn than ever before. It’s no longer necessary to sign up for an evening language course or to devote your weekends to pouring over Spanish a textbook. Below, are a few ideas on how to incorporate learning a new language into your existing routine.

Apps

You’ve probably heard of language learning apps like Duolingo, Babbel and Pimsleur. Browse the existing language apps to find the one that most appeals to you. For instance, Duolingo gamifies the process of learning a language and delivers snack-sized lessons, while Pimsleur’s lessons are 30 minutes long, but include a mode for use while driving.

Learn through entertainment

If boosting your language skills while lounging on the couch is more your style, check out Lingopie. Lingopie streams television shows in foreign languages and incorporates interactive subtitles depending on your level of fluency.

If you already have basic foreign language skills, reading a children's book or comic book written in a foreign language is a fun way to practice your comprehension.

Finally, listening to a podcast or music in another language while you’re taking a walk or commuting is yet another way of boosting your fluency.

Take a Class– from home

Taking an online class is another way to learn a foreign language. Sites like Coursera and edX offer a variety of asynchronous language classes, some of which are free. If being in a class with other students energizes you, though, consider a class that meets in real-time.

Meetup

Sites like Meetup or local adult education classes allow us to connect with groups of people with common interests in our geographic area. The possibilities for fun, in-person gatherings are vast– examples include holding a potluck featuring German cuisine or playing Scrabble using only Russian words.

Plan a trip

Incentivize your foreign language project by planning a trip to a country that speaks that language. There’s no better– or more fun– way to learn the nuances of a language than to immerse yourself in that culture. To make your vacation more affordable and have a more authentic experience, consider using a site like HomeExchange, which allows you to temporarily swap homes with someone in a different location.

Talk to your school’s foreign language teachers

Chances are you have a hidden treasure trove of resources in your school’s foreign language teachers. Ask them for recommendations, and leave us a comment if you discover any brilliant tips!

Maximize the Immersive Technology in the Classroom

Immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) provide students with stimulating environments that add tons of educated value. For example, utilizing these cutting edge educational technology tools allows students to see far off places and visit times they’d never be able to experience in reality. There are hundreds of adventures each classroom can take. Before you decide to add this new tech to your school (and we think you should) check out these ways you can use it in the classroom and beyond to maximize its learning potential and justify the expense.

Use it For STEM Learning

The fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics can be opened way up with VR and AR. Scholastic has an entire curriculum dedicated to integrating VR into STEM lesson plans. These areas are ideal for VR and AR since students can travel far beyond our solar system or down to a cellular level. Concepts go from imagined to real. Imagine being able to teach your science students about how a volcano works then virtually traveling inside one as it erupts.

Use it For Professional Development

The best thing about an exciting new form of learning is sharing it with your staff. Training staff and teachers on VR and AR equipment not only creates buy-in, but they now get to add it to their professional development. Use experts (bring them there virtually with Skype), take webinars, hold onsite demonstrations or use your OneNote Staff Notebooks as a collaborative space and resource library to develop the VR and AR skills throughout the entire school.

Getting excited about new technology is great, but knowing how to implement it to its fullest is even better! Ready to integrate this newest edtech in your school? We can help. Contact us today.

Plan Your Winter Break Now

Winter break is almost here. For a few short weeks, the halls will quiet down and emails and phone calls will slow to a trickle. While this time promises a moment to relax, it is also a mere speed bump until the next semester and the accompanying laundry list of to-dos. But before that busy time comes, take a moment to set goals and expectations for things you want to accomplish during these precious few short weeks. 

Here’s what we suggest:

Attend a conference.

Conferences, or any other networking opportunity for that matter, are a great way to recharge your batteries over winter break. EdTechTeam hosts multiple events, like summits, bootcamps and workshops across the United States, that unlock the mysteries surrounding G Suite for Education. If none are near your school, you can bring one there. If winter break travel doesn’t appeal to you, or a conference isn’t available during your days off, take the time to look at the ones you might want to attend and put them on your schedule for next semester.

Research devices.

Grab a blanket, some hot cocoa and tuck in with a good wish list for your school. Winter break is an ideal time to read reviews and compare the benefits of the devices your school could use most. Wondering about the differences between all the different Chromebooks? Now’s the time to dive in and do some research. Catch up with our blogs by re-reading this one about choosing your next Chromebook. Or, go to the source. Microsoft Education lists all of its budget-friendly devices here. And, Google For Education’s website has information about the tools the tech giant is currently offering, including G Suite for Education, virtual and augmented reality and digital tools and apps.

Complete budgets for next year.

This task may not be tops on your list of fun things to do over winter break, but think how much better you’ll feel when it’s done? Also, you can budget those items that you’ve been researching all break. A helpful tip to getting your edtech approved is to have a plan for its use. Also, consider the cost of old vs. new tech, noting that new tech has less maintenance costs and is more efficient. 

With your winter break list of to-dos ready to go, you’ll be able to enjoy some rest and relaxation. Let us know what your plans are winter break, and if we can help.

3 Steps To Become A Microsoft Innovation Expert

Looking for ways to promote professional development? Help your teachers become Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Experts. A MIE Expert is the last rung on Microsoft’s Innovative Educator program’s certification ladder. The journey starts by becoming a Microsoft Innovative Educator, then there’s also an option to become a MIE Trainer, and finally with earning the MIE Expert certification. These education specialists are skilled at integrating technology in the classroom. MIE Experts work hand-in-hand with Microsoft to lead innovation in education, advocate for the effective use of technology in the classroom, share ideas with a global network of peers and become thought leaders in the EdTech space. 

Joining the program is easy. The self-nomination tool is open year-round. Your teachers can nominate themselves at any time but the announcement isn’t made until August when Microsoft posts the official list. 

• Step 1: Make sure to join the Microsoft Educator Community and complete your profile. Keep in mind, you will need to submit the URL to your public profile as a part of the nomination process. You can find your URL by going into Edit Profile and looking under “basic information.”

• Step 2: You must earn 1,000 points on the Microsoft Educator Community and become a Certified MIE Once again, you must be a Certified MIE to become (or stay) an MIE Expert. Although you do not need to be a MIE Trainer to become an MIE Expert.

• Step 3: Create a 2-minute video or Sway that answers the following questions in a manner that creatively expresses what makes you a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert. To share the video/Sway in your nomination, you will need to post it somewhere that allows you to create a URL to share it.

The questions are:

1. Why do you consider yourself to be a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert?

2. Describe how you have incorporated Microsoft technologies in innovative ways in your classroom. Include artifacts that demonstrate your innovation. Your examples should demonstrate that you have cultivated a strong 21st century teaching and learning environment.

3. How have you impacted the learning and growth of your colleagues? Have you reached beyond your classroom to coach/support other teachers in their growth?

4. If you become a MIE-Expert, how do you hope it will impact your current role in the next 12 months?

Once these three tasks are completed, the educator simply fills out this self-nomination form. MIE Experts have access to all sorts of opportunities like, professional and career development opportunities and certifications, speaking, training or coaching colleagues, participating in focus groups for Microsoft products, testing new Microsoft products and collaborating with innovative educators around the globe. Help your teachers get the most out of their knowledge of technology in the classroom and earn this badge of honor.

Tackle Productivity Head-On With These 5 Tech Hacks

Time. It’s always something you need more of, especially as school administrators. Your days tend to be full of improving instruction, managerial tasks, delegating and creating a climate where kids want to learn. That’s a lot to pack into a single day. Good thing there are lots of tech hacks that can get help get you organized and STAY organized.

Here are 5 tech hacks you should be using every day to boost productivity:

1. Use Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Outlook has tons of productivity and time management tools. You can use it to set appointments and remind yourself of tasks with the Calendar. You can also organize your schedule by day, week or even year. Outlook Calendar has these fun, colorful sticky notes that you can drag anywhere on your screen. Don’t forget to list the times you aren’t available – lunches, personal development time and vacations. This hack helps to keep your staff updated about your time too.

2. Set a daily reminder to check Microsoft Teams and Google Tasks. Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork in Office 365. It contains chat threads and online meetings. Make it a point to come in every day and check Chat and note any meetings that may have popped up so you’ll never have to scramble at the last minute. If Google is more your thing, the same rule applies. Google Tasks can only keep you on, well, task, if you use it on a daily basis.

3. Set up email filters. Whether you use Gmail or Outlook, filters are wildly available. With filters, you can automatically sort your emails and move them into folders. You can filter messages by subject line, sender, large attachments, etc. and even send canned responses. If you’re not filtering your emails, you could be missing the important ones because they’re lost in all the junk that’s littering up your inbox.

4. Download a personal dashboard extension. This can be a real timesaver, especially if the first thing you do in the morning is look at your laptop. Wake up knowing your to-dos, the weather and even add words of inspiration.

5. Keep your digital workspace tidy. It’s easy to let general digital housekeeping duties fall to the wayside, especially when you’re busy. But, if it takes you forever to wade through your files, folders or desktop to find what you need, skipping clean-up tasks won’t do you any favors. Set a reminder for the end of each day or week to clear out your downloads and desktop.

Put these hacks into practice and you’ll be on your way to your most productive year yet! Let us know how it goes in the comments.

Professional Development 101

Professional Development is hardly one-size-fits-all because every one of your teachers has different needs that must be met. Tackle professional development in a new way by thinking outside of the box. Try these ideas, based on what districts across the United States are doing: 

• Unconferences
  An unconference is a grassroots conference where the content is provided by the attendees, not outside experts. Don’t think of them as unofficial events, rather bring unconferences in-house as the official professional development.

TIP: Have the MIEE and GoogleEIs at your institution do the talking, not the administrators. Have breakouts using Google Sheets and Google Hangouts.

• Personal Learning Community

Personal Learning Communities, or PLCs, are a group of teachers with a shared interest or mutual commitment. Administrators can choose the focus, like hybrid teaching models, and allow teachers to sign up for the PLCs they align with most.

TIP: Use Google Team Drive, to keep everyone in the loop. You can drop information in about each PLC and share with your team.

• Choice Boards

Choice Boards offer a menu of professional development options for teachers to pick and choose from; the amount would depend on your district. This method allows you to meet your teachers’ individual needs, instead of addressing them in a group setting.

TIP: Create a DIY bingo board with Google Sheets or Docs. Or, go old school and draw it up on a white board then use Microsoft Office Lens to digitize it. This app trims and enhances to make notes on whiteboards and blackboard readable on your mobile device.

• Personal Action Plans

Personal Action Plans allow individual teachers to set their own learning goals, including an action plan to achieve them.

TIP: Try Microsoft Sway. This digital storytelling app helps create professional, interactive designs with images, text, videos that can be easily shared with just a link.

• Peer Observation

With peer observation, your teachers take advantage of the best source of professional development available to them, each other. Teachers shadow then follow up with colleagues about applying what they’ve learned in their own classrooms. The best part is if they have questions, the answer is down the hall. 

TIP: Suggest Microsoft OneNote to take notes or draw up quick ideas. This tool has a variety of ingenious uses and each note is stored on a phone, pad or laptop and accessed from anywhere

Got some great professional development ideas? Share them with us and include which tech tools you used to knock it out of the park.

Go-To Tools for Presentations: When to Blog and When To PowerPoint

The goal of a presentation is to effectively convey information that allows the audience to remember what has been said. That being said, there are several options as to how to give a presentation, specifically for a final project. For students, presentations can be given as individuals or groups, or for educators in seminars. The best tool for the job depends on whether the presentation will be visual or verbal. 

When to Blog 

Blogs are definitely the ideal verbal tool for presentations. They are becoming increasingly popular for e-portfolios, offering students the opportunity to review, communicate, assess, archive and display their work - including blogging for projects and presentations. Google has a great Keyword Planner tool that allows the writer to enter seed keywords and receive a list of suggested search terms. Microsoft’s Windows Open Live Writer is another solid option.

There are several pros to using blogs in presentations:

• Blog writing is informal, unlike academic writing. This style takes the pressure off students and also allows them to speak their audiences’ language. Blog, or web log, style is typically relaxed, which makes it comfortable and easy for students.

• Blogs allow for comments. Students can get feedback from peers, educators and even parents about their blog.

• Blogs are published. The students’ work is online and can help educate others about their opinion.

• Blogs can easily be linked to social media. Blogs are almost made for social media. A student’s project can easily be shared or linked to the school’s social media account.

There are also some cons:

• A blog doesn’t allow the student to practice his or her speaking skills. In today’s world - where it is a struggle to compete with online and handheld distractions for students’ attention - there aren’t as many real-world opportunities for students to practice their speaking skills.

• Blogs aren’t conducive to group projects. It can be hard to track who-did-what if only one blog is uploaded. Presentations give an entire group the opportunity to participate, even those that aren’t the strongest writers.

When to PowerPoint

When the presentation goal is to be visual, the presentation needs to be done in PowerPoint. Microsoft’s presentation software allows users to create fluid, cinematic motion in one click. Slides can be duplicated, morphed together, moved, etc. 

There are definite pros to PowerPoint: 

• PowerPoint is the standard when it comes to professional settings. It’s been offered in Microsoft Office versions for more than a decade. It’s highly-recognizable.

• PowerPoint can improve presentations. The software’s ability to use animations and images is a definite plus. Even basic shapes can enhance data and help get the point across.

• PowerPoint slides can be easily distributed. The slides can be printed or emailed. They can be uploaded to the cloud or saved on a flash drive.

Yet, there are also some cons to PowerPoint:

• PowerPoint requires some time to learn. There are a lot of options, which can seem overwhelming to users. Also, novices could put too much information on slides, ruining the entire purpose of using PowerPoint – which should be to enhance a presentation. No one wants to sit and read slide-after-slide. 

• PowerPoint could be riddled with technical difficulties. The computer could stop working, power might be lost to the outlet or the overhead display doesn’t work right. These might seem like conditions that can be avoided, but you never know what can happen in a space that is unfamiliar.

Follow us @AreyJones for more great tech tips.

Seek Mentors Out On Twitter

Twitter is more than tidbits of daily news and tweets about trending television. It is a great source to find like-minded people in your field and even a mentor.

Twitter influencers, experts, thought leaders and kindred spirits can help improve your teaching by supplying information and ideas that you can put into practical applications. Once you find someone to follow, you can build on that virtual relationship and use them as a mentor, either virtually or face-to-face.

Figure out who you’d like to follow.

The first step is to actually figure out who’d you like to follow. Sounds easy. But, the Internet is a BIG place and Twitter is no exception.

Use Twitter’s search to seek out influencers and people you want to follow. Type your keywords in the top search. You can also use Twitter’s filters and Advanced Search to search locally, which gives you a better opportunity for an in-person meeting.

You can try these five hashtags to get you started.

1. #GoogleET, #GoogleCE, #GoogleEI

2. #MIEExpert

3. #SkypeMT or #MinecraftMentor

4. #GoogleTeacherTribe

5. #STEAM

A search for these hashtags brings up the top results, but also people tied to them. This is a really easy way to start following an influencer and possible mentor. 

If you’re still having an issue finding who to follow, search through your other social media platforms. How many people do you know that use just ONE form of social media? You can increase your chances of connecting with a mentor if you can overlap social networks. 

Prepare to take the next step.

Once you find someone to follow that is mentor-material, do some research and learn as much as you can about them. Start a virtual conversation or check out any podcasts or blogs they have to find common areas of interest. Do they seem comfortable sharing their knowledge? If so, continue on.

The approach.

Build a rapport with your potential mentor. Promote their tweets, ask for their advice, comment on their blogs and so on. Treat the virtual world as you would the real one and get to know them slowly. The key is to build a dialog and show you have something of value to contribute. 

When you’re ready, email the influencer and simply ask if they would be willing to act as a mentor to you. Email works great because it is - literally - the electronic equivalent of a letter. It is more formal than a DM but not so formal as a mailed piece of paper.

Once you create and facilitate that online relationship, you can decide both decide if, when and how you want to meet in person. Even if you never get to that stage, there’s so much powerful information out there that just following posted advice provides a great opportunity for personal and professional growth. Reach out to Arey Jones for more advice on your professional development.