Thursday, August 6, 2009

Promethean Focus Group

I've been asked to help an area district next year with their Promethean Focus Group of teachers. There will be 20 teachers that will be getting a Promethean Board, and they'll have access to the ActivVote & ActivExpression voting devices, as well as ActiViews for the Science teachers- sometime down the road.

Photo taken from Promethean World and taken using Jing


My goal from the Superintendent is to lead them through this year with two summer kickoff dates (Aug. 12-13th) and then follow up sessions about every six weeks. The only stipulations he put on me was that I need to show them sound educational usages for these Boards, and that this style of group needs to be reproducible for next year (for a new group of teachers).
Initially, I thought to start up a Ning group, so I created one to use. Then, I thought since CA BOCES hosts Moodle for all of our teachers, couldn't I help promote that more?

Wait, just keep it simple.

I don't know how much technology these teacher really use in their classes already.
Keep it simple.
I'll do my best to help them learn the ActivInspire software and give them time to find resources that they can use on Promethean Planet or other sites online.
I'll use this Wikispace to put up an agenda and to give them a chance to not only get information, but to add content to as well.

The great Tech guy there walked me through the training rooms and showed me where some of the teacher rooms are in the building (these will be for breakout sessions since we'll all be in a lab w/ one ActivBoard). We talked about making sure we were on the same page with what the district's capabilities are, and also checked some of the sites their teachers have access to.
For instance, Google Earth and Adobe Connect.
I'm actually hoping to have someone come in on the 2nd day to talk a little about how they use Promethean through Adobe Connect (we'll see).

I'm looking for any other suggestions to show the
"Power of the Promethean Interactive Whiteboard"!

I've heard all summer about how IWB's just make the teacher more of the focus, but my hope is that it can make classes more student-centered? I hope to have students create their own content for a lesson (maybe upload it into their own wiki) and share that with the others in the class, maybe even around the world. Is that asking too much?
Maybe we'll get to Global Collaborations after school starts!?!?

Baby steps to start out.


I'm already asked for plenty of help, especially on Twitter and have gotten advice from @budtheteacher @activeducator ,http://twitter.com/activtweets and a host of others.




What do you think?
Photo taken from Promethean World and taken using Jing