Drive Your Own Professional Development

[PowerUp What Works]

Your Name and Title: Dr. Tracy Gray, Managing Director, PowerUp WHAT WORKS

School or Organization Name:  American Institutes for Research

Co-Presenter Name(s): Dr. Judith Zorfass, Co-PI, PowerUp WHAT WORKS, Education Development Center, Inc.; Dr. Kristin Ruedel, American Institutes for Research

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: United States, East Coast

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s): Teachers and specialists (Elementary and Middle School), PD staff

Short Session Description:Customize Your Online Professional Development Using PowerUp

Full Session Description:

In today’s technology-rich world, online learning opportunities for educators abound.  You can learn about evidence-based instructional strategies, the Common Core State Standards, and ways to differentiate instruction through technology by accessing webinars, online courses, websites, and discussion forums.  You can engage in self-paced activities or participate in more formalized and structured offerings.  Faced with all of these options, you have to ask yourself: What are my own learning needs? What should I select from what is available?  How can I create a coherent and meaningful customized plan?

The purpose of this webinar is to introduce participants to a comprehensive online learning platform, PowerUp WHAT WORKS (www.powerupwhatworks.org).  PowerUp provides educators (e.g., teachers, specialists, and PD staff) with a wide array of choices for creating customized professional development—something like a PD Playlist.  The webinar will serve as the kick-off session for an upcoming five-part series on customized PD presented offered during the month of May as part of Ed Tech Month.

The session will begin with brief tour of the multimedia materials available on PowerUp WHAT WORKS, for example: evidence-based instructional strategies, links to relevant Common Core State Standards, short slide shows, descriptive videos, timely blogs, archived webinars, research articles, grab-and-go resources, technology ideas, and an extensive data base to find tech tools.

Next, we will demonstrate ways to meaningfully combine selected materials drawn from PowerUp.  For example, supposing your focus was on how to teach with technology to meet the Math Common Core Practice Standards.  The relevant content within a customized “playlist” might include a slide show, teaching strategies, two related videos, varied resources, and a blog.   A discussion to encourage ideas, feedback, and suggestions from the audience will be a major part of the session.

At the conclusion, we will provide information about the upcoming webinar series. In addition to logistics (dates, times, and badges), we will the content for the next five webinars.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: PowerUp WHAT WORKS www.powerupwhatworks.org