Are you ready?

Throughout the summer months many educators plan little more than rest and relaxation. The school year seems to start too early and end too quickly. Somewhere in between we experience joys, frustrations, challenges and successes of our student learning. Summer vacation is our time to refresh and renew so that we can do it all over again the next year. Yet so many educators choose to use that time to spend countless hours in taking courses to improve our teaching.

Recently, Massachusetts DESE has released standards for  high quality professional development as part of the Race to the Top initiative.

 A set of coherent learning experiences that is systematic, purposeful, and structured over a sustained period of time with the goal of improving teacher practice and student outcomes. It enables educators to facilitate the learning of students by acquiring and applying knowledge, skills, and abilities that address student needs and improvement goals of the district, school, and individual. HQPD conforms to best practices in research and relates to educators' assignments and professional responsibilities. 

In this summer course we will explore current online technology tools, discuss their impact on student learning and develop lessons and strategies to integrate them into current teaching. The goal is to research and develop technology integration project that supports the curriculum and helps students reach their learning goals to be implemented during the 2013-2014 school year.

This course will challenge you to assess your skills and then push yourself to learn more. Every module will ask you to contemplate and evaluate the use of a tool for student learning. Some will be easy. obvious in the integration. Other online tools may nudge you to change the way you teach (just a bit) and then others will bring a whole new perspective.

In the spirit of this course, I will be challenging myself to learn more as well. For example, I usually use Edublogs to host my blog. I am writing this using Blogger for this course and will continue to add features throughout the summer. Some modules will be the same that were used in summer 2012 and others will be trying new tools. I will be learning from you through your feedback and reflections.

Take risks, think out of the box, don't give up, and enjoy the ride.

Are you ready?