iTeacher and Induction Training 2015

This summer we had a fun time planning two special professional development days: iTeacher and Induction Teacher/New-to-District Tech Day.

For our iTeachers we started the day painting wooden apple signs for their doors. Thanks to Burlap and Ribbons for coming in for this activity. Teachers were so excited and the apples turned out adorable!

We also had Kristen Hearne's husband come in and take head shots for everyone. The goal was to have a nice picture to use for social media sites and our Google domain.

After checking out all the adorable apples we moved to the library and started discussion about model classrooms.

Our goal is for our iTeachers to be considered model classrooms. We used Answer Garden to brainstorm what a model classroom looks like. Then we used a model classroom rubric shared by Mooresville Schools. The rubric uses the 5 ISTE Standards. Our iTeachers were divided into groups and tasked with narrowing the evaluation statements down to 10 for each standard. This is the final product. Our iTeachers made a copy of the rubric, used it for self assessment then broke into grade levels groups to discuss weaknesses and share ideas for addressing the weaknesses.
We plan to use this rubric with teachers that we are working with to create technology goals for the year.



After a lunch break we discussed building a Twitter culture. I used ideas from Gwyneth  Jones' Tweet Like a Ninja presentation and this Edutopia article to help our iTeachers create or update their accounts. We were also inspired by Alice Keeler's Twittervention. We made our own Remind group for our teachers to receive Twitter tips and tricks throughout the year and another group for Google tips.

For the final hours we divided into two groups: Social Media/Bloggers and Professional Development. Our iTeachers completed a survey before attending telling us their preference and then we made sure each school had at least one iTeacher in each of the two groups.
Kristen Hearne took the blogger group and helped them log into our iTeacher blog and write their first post. Kristen Gunter, Jessica Preisig and I worked with the PD group brainstorming ideas for this school year. We introduced our new PD series called "Lead and Learn Tech". These sessions are bimonthly, optional sessions after school led by our iTeachers. We decided to do this after our iTeachers expressed interest in being more involved in presenting PD.

We got a great head start on the year and had a really fun time with our iTeachers.

Our next special day was working with our induction and new-to-district teachers. Each of us read Teach Like a Pirate this summer and our plans were influenced and inspired by the ideas in this book. If you haven't read it, go buy it now!

We created custom nametags with the agenda, hashtag, QR code to surveys and app icons for the apps they need for the day. We color coded the nametags by level.

In the pirate spirit, we put out tiny containers of Play Doh and asked each teacher to create something that illustrated where they were on the technology spectrum then share a picture of their sculpture on Padlet. You can see their creations here. I was impressed with their creativity: buckets, smiley faces and flowers. We took this activity even further to teach a few tech tools and the SAMR model.
Posting to Padlet was a Substitution level activity. Then they were asked to use Pic Collage to add to their sculpture picture; explanation of their Play Doh, name, school, etc. This is an example of Augmentation. For Modification, the Pic Collage was put into Thinglink so a link to a school website and Twitter account could be added. Finally for Redefinition we asked them to tweet out their Thinglink using our district hashtag. You can see a few examples by searching #a1digitalinnovation.

We had 5 breakout sessions planned for the day.
1. First Day of School with Kristen Gunter
2. Classroom Management with Jessica Preisig
3. Core Apps with Kristen Hearne
4. Google with me
5. App Gallery with some of our iTeachers

In First Day of School, Kristen shared a Google Slides template that could be used to make a door sign including picture, name, and QR code links to important websites. She also shared a few apps.
Jessica shared a few tips for managing a 1:1 classroom. In Core Apps, Kristen shared tips for using purchased apps like Notability, Showbie and Book Creator. I shared Google mail and calendar basics, then used a shared Google doc to talk about share settings and Drive features. We also took a little brain break using Go Noodle and I shared information about Seesaw to the K-2 and 3-5 groups.
In the App Gallery our iTeachers helped teachers explore displays about lots of different apps.

Just for fun we shared this video from Veronica Pooh Nash and we gave out our new iPad badge sheet and a badge for attending.

We enjoyed getting to meet our new teachers and letting some of their enthusiasm rub off on us.