Information literacy, the ability to find, analyze, manage, present and share information as well as the ability to adapt rapidly to the changes brought about by the availability of information, is a critical skill for 21st century citizens. Students need to become skilled in the use of the range of technology resources they will encounter. These skills will not come from special computer classes or from drill and practice computer use, but through the full integration of technology in their education. As 21st-century jobs become increasingly information based, workers need to: • use multimedia tools to communicate and present ideas and concepts orally and in writing • separate the important, relevant information from the vast mountain of information available • quickly learn specialized information in an ongoing fashion • work effectively in physical and virtual groups The District’s philosophy of integrating technology into the instructional program reflects these issues. Half Hollow Hills’ Professional Development courses aim to support staff members in becoming efficient users and integrators of technology within their classrooms.
“Create an HHH Wiki” Workshop; Developing Your Wiki On the HHH Wiki Server 5 hours PDP Location: West Hollow Middle School Mac Lab 1 Date: June 29 Time: 8 am – 1 pm Instructor: Jeannine Ortiz Participants in this workshop will be guided in developing a wiki for use in their classes as a collaboration and/or information site for their students. Using this unique web-based tool, staff members will create a private Internet space where ONLY their specifically chosen students/colleagues can collaborate on such activities as • Developing study /review guides • Project development with peer review • Group authoring • Tracking a group project • Data Collection • Presentations • Group/team collaborations for Professional Learning Community work **pre-requisite: participants should have an understanding of what a wiki is and a concept of what activity they will create with the wiki Google Lit Trips: Travel Through Literature or Time With New Technology 5 hours PDP Location: Greenspan CO room 208 Date: July 7 Time: 8 am – 1 pm Instructor: Michelle Jacobs Google Lit Trips will allow educators, especially English and Social Studies instructors to take a virtual journey and bring literature an/or history to life. Google Lit Trips interfaces with Google Earth to create a literary or historical map that plots a virtual course of the life and events of a character in literary works or history. Teachers can provide their students with a visual support and hands on interaction while combining history, geography, and literature. In this course, educators will explore shared Google Lit Trips and learn the basic skills to create their own Google Lit virtual tour.
iLife 9 “In Depth”: Investigate the NEW iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iTunes, and GarageBand Applications for Creative Assessments 15 hours PDP Location: High School East Art Lab Date: July 18, 19, 20 Time: 8 am – 1 pm Instructor: Allyson Uttendorfer Just as Microsoft Office is a suite for word-processing, calculating and presenting, iLife is a suite for various multimedia projects. In this workshop, participants will touch upon all components of this multimedia authoring series for use as tools in their instruction and as ways of developing creative student assessments: • iPhoto for photo archiving, simple photo editing, and slideshow and book development • iMovie (a MAJOR application upgrade—more like a NEW application) for video editing and movie production • iDVD for DVD authoring of videos and slideshows • GarageBand for development of enhanced podcasts Participants will utilize the new FLIP camcorders during this session and will create videos on themes selected by the instructor. The workshop also includes creating a DVD from the videos as well as a podcast. If you are a newbie to the use of multimedia in your classes or if you have used the old iLife 6 multimedia suite and need to know about the vast amount of changes in iLife 9, this course is definitely for you! Limited to 16 participants Podcasting Workshop : Creating and Publishing High Frequency Vocabulary Lessons for the iPod Generation 15 hrs Location: Candlewood Middle School Lab 112 Date: August 16, 17, 18 Time: 8 am – 1 pm Instructor: Valerie Levy Are you interested in placing your high frequency vocabulary words on the web in a format that your students can listen to there or download to their MP3 player? Would you like to easily record and broadcast (podcast) specific lectures/lessons? The Half Hollow Hills Podcast Server allows staff members to mount and serve podcasts of curriculum related events that can be subscribed to in a podcast aggregator such as iTunes. (A viewer/listener does NOT need an iPod to see/hear these broadcasts---they can be seen/heard in iTunes on any computer. Broadcasts can also be downloaded onto many types of mp3 players). Participants in this course will learn all they need to know to start broadcasting their lessons and will be authorized to use the District Podcast server. This course is formatted as a workshop so that participants will have many lessons completed before the start of the school year.
Creating a Paperless Classroom with School Weblockers, With an Assist From Blogger and Google Docs For secondary staff only 5 hours PDP Please sign up for ONE section: SECTION 1 Location: Dates: Time: Instructor:
West Hollow Mac Lab 1 August 22 8 am – 1 pm Jeannine Ortiz
SECTION 2 Location: Dates: Time: Instructor:
West Hollow Mac Lab 1 October 19 and 20 3:45 pm – 6:15 pm Jeannine Ortiz
Tired of constantly shuffling and wasting paper? Investigate how easily you can start developing a paperless classroom! IN the first part of this workshop you will learn how you can give virtual handouts to students through the District’s Weblockers subscription, a portal where every teacher has the ability to hand out assignments to their classes and where every student has the ability to hand work into their teachers. Make assessments of turned in assignments that report back to students’ accounts, and have automatic records of those assessments. Classes change? Students shift? No Problem. Updates to your Weblocker classes are automatic. Files can be accessed and posted from any Internet connected computer. Digital drop boxes are automatically created and assigned for each class. You can even see when students last logged in, what HW they downloaded, and when they uploaded their completed work. No more papers to carry around, keep organized, and return to students! It’s all automated online! The second part of this workshop will investigate how the free Blogger tool and Google Docs can further help you and your students post work online instead of on paper.
BlackBoard 15 hours PDP Location: HS West PC Lab Date: August 23, 24, 25 Time: 8 am – 1 pm Instructor: Andrea Mastrocco Secondary teachers now have the opportunity to use the BlackBoard course management platform to enhance their instruction and also to communicate with their students in new ways, connecting more effectively, and keeping students informed, involved, and collaborating together. The system is flexible and easy to use—from managing content and engaging learners to assessing outcomes. Spend time before the beginning of the school year to set up your classes and populate your new BlackBoard space with your lessons and support materials. NetTreker 5 hours PDP Location: West Hollow Mac Lab 1 Date: August 24 Time: 8 am – 1 pm Instructor: Danielle Reed A GREAT online educational resource available to District staff and students is NetTreker. This educational search engine brings the best of the web to K-12 students, teachers, and librarians. NetTreker connects teachers and their students to more than 180,000 hand-selected, educator-approved sites organized by readability level and aligned with NY state standards, providing resources ideal for every student's learning needs with safe, reliable results. Participants in this class will be instructed in how to set up an account at this site for themselves and their students, investigate the various resources found there, discuss their educational value, and develop lesson plans that incorporate various aspects of these resources.
Supercharging Computer Integration With Learning.com 5 hours Location: West Hollow Mac Lab 1 Date: August 25 Time: 8 am – 1 pm Instructor: Danielle Reed (Grades k-5 and 6th Grade Computer Wheel Teachers Only) This workshop surveying different types of technology integration projects for grades k-5 and Computer Wheel classes is an especially useful resource for developing lessons for weekly computer integration time. Learning.com’s web-based curriculum allows teachers to seamlessly integrate technology skills into their math, science, language arts and social studies instruction. The system offers engaging and interactive lessons and activities, while providing students with the skills they need to be successful in the 21st century. This workshop will also introduce teachers to new ways of developing and sharing their technology-infused lessons based on the tools and resources found within the Learning.com system. Learning.com is the tool that is highly suggested by the District for grade k-5 teachers to use as the foundation for their computer integration lessons. Enhanced Podcasting 15 hours PDP Location: Candlewood Middle School Lab room 112 Date: Thursdays September 22, Oct. 6, Oct. 13, Oct. 20, Oct. 27 Time: 3:45 pm – 6:15 pm Instructor: Valerie Levy In this 15 hour workshop, participants will develop several sets of vocabulary lists, phrases and/or lectures that they will narrate and then “podcast” for student viewing and listening after mounting them on the District’s Podcast Server. An “enhanced podcast” uses still images (photos you take yourself and/or high resolution images culled from the Internet and/or slides from a PowerPoint presentation) simultaneously with recorded narration and/or music to impart information to an audience. The resulting product is a set of slides with narration that will then be placed on the District Podcast Server which will also allow downloading onto an iPod or viewing directly on the web. The slideshow can also contain hyperlinks to websites so that the viewer can be pointed to more resources. Podcasting, using GarageBand, can be taught to students so that they can create their own illustrated narrations which can be collected for assessment. These student works can be posted on the District Podcast Server. A great way to post student exemplars. **Participants must come prepared with vocabulary lists and/or phrases/topics of what they will be recording.
Power Up Your Lessons With Powerful Tools: BrainPop/World Book Kids/Visual Thesaurus 5 hours PDP Location: West Hollow Mac Lab 1 Date: October 4 and 11 Time: 3:45pm – 6:15pm Instructor: Danielle Reed Investigate how the District subscriptions to BrainPop and World Book Kids can help infuse your lessons with some of the best educational content on the Internet. Find images, graphs, video and sound bytes to enhance your instruction and entice your students. Learn about Visual Thesaurus, an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words. Its innovative display encourages exploration and learning. Help your students learn to understand language in a powerful new way. Curriculum Connections Using Green Screen Technology 15 hours PDP Date: Wednesdays, Oct. 26, Nov. 2, 9, 16, 30 Time: 3:45 pm – 6:45 pm Instructor: Allyson Uttendorfer This course will introduce teachers to the Green Screen feature of iMovie 09 through creative, hands-on learning. Participants will learn basic editing techniques as well as advanced i-Movie features in the creation of collaborative movies from pre-production to distribution. Curricular connections will be addressed throughout the course and video equipment and an official green screen will be used in the production process. Internet resources such as iTunes U, Youtube, and Freeplay Music will be used throughout the course. Phone ‘apps’ will be explored such as Proprompter for reading and writing dialogue. Assessment methodologies/ criteria will be included in course work. Advanced video students will be asked to participate in select workshop activities to model parts of the process. This course is limited to a maximum 16 participants due to equipment constraints. **Participants must come prepared with vocabulary lists and/or phrases of what they will be recording.