Staff Development Day: Integrating Technology

Since 1999, over 3 million teachers (including 20 from New Prague) in 35 countries have completed the Intel® Teach to the Future professional development program. Teachers learn from other teachers how to integrate technology into their current curriculum. The course focuses on using technology to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills. Throughout the course, teachers develop a unit portfolio that includes lesson plans, student project samples, and assessment tools.

With help from the NCLB Enhancing Education Through Technology grant, New Prague, along with 10 other local school districts, was able to start implementing the program. On January 22, our Staff Development Day will focus on integrating technology. The Intel® participants will present a variety of teaching strategies to help educators at all levels incorporate technology into their lessons.

Most teachers would agree the best professional development workshops are ones that share information, best-practices, and resources that can be applied immediately in the classroom. With that in mind, the goal of each workshop is to provide a “mini-session” of the Intel experience. Presenters will share examples of supporting instruction with technology and demonstrate specific skills to help teachers get started. Next, teachers will be given “hands-on” time to apply the technology to a specific lesson and ask questions with support from classroom teachers who have experience with the technology. To make the best use of our limited time, teachers are asked to bring the following items to the workshops.

• Materials for a lesson that will be taught between February – May
• Username/Password information for resources that might be used, e.g., School login, Skyward, TeacherWeb, United Streaming, etc.
• Flash drive for saving files

Workshops have class size limits; register early to ensure your schedule. Online registration begins Thursday, January 4 – Thursday, January 11. http://www.np.k12.mn.us/OnlineRegistration/