Professional Development Workshops for January 2nd

Here is our schedule for the January 2nd professional development day for the faculties at Ellis Jr. High and each of the five elementary schools. (Talladega High School and Career Tech will be following a different schedule.) We are offering six different technology workshops, each of which will last approximately two hours. You will be able to choose two workshops—one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Morning sessions begin at 8:30 and end around 10:30. Afternoon sessions begin promptly at 12:30 and end around 2:30. The schedule will allow you to get to restaurants early and have ample time for lunch.

Below, you will see a description of each workshop so that you can begin to decide which ones you would like to attend. Once you have decided what you would like to attend, go to PDWeb and register.

• Google Gadgets (Janet Taylor) (Career Tech. Mr. Morgan's room) This hands-on workshop will focus on some of the newer tools offered free through Google. Participants will learn how to use iGoogle, Google Notebook, and GoogleDocs. This workshop will be offered both morning and afternoon.
• Practical Classroom Solutions (Thad Miller and Bradley Ward) (Ellis Jr. High upstairs in Mr. Miller's room) The presenters will demonstrate the technology they are using in their classes and Ellis and is easily transferable to any other classroom. You will learn how to project images from your computer to your television. You will see how you can use a student response system to test student learning and save their responses to enter in your gradebook. The presenters will take the mystery out of purchasing technology by giving you ideas on the best and cheapest places from which to order. This workshop will be offered both morning and afternoon.
• Let’s Play Jeopardy (Karen Clark) (Career Tech Building in Mr. Hale's room) You will learn how to create a Jeopardy game on the computer you can use with your students. Please bring a copy of your course of study and the needed resources to use to help develop the questions and answers. You will also need to bring a flash drive to store your work. This workshop will be offered both morning and afternoon.
• PowerPoint…a Teacher’s Best Tool (Pattie Thomas) (Graham Computer Lab) You will learn the basics of PowerPoint, see examples of how PowerPoint can engage and assess students, discover how to gather free PowerPoints, and create a PowerPoint of your own. This workshop will be offered both morning and afternoon.
• Get Organized! Managing Digital Data With Ease (Dr. Frank Buck) (Bandroom at THS in the Career Tech Building) Nobody ever taught us how to organize the data on our computers. That changes today. You will come away with strategies that make filing and finding your data easy, a system for backing up your data, best e-mail practices, Google tricks you probably never knew, a look at why iGoogle should be your homepage, and other practical techniques for saving time and increasing your productivity. This workshop will be offered during the morning session only.
• Your Own Blog in 10 Minutes or Less (Dr. Frank Buck) (Bandroom at THS in the Career Tech Building) You have read all about them and seen them. This session shows you how to create your own blog fast and for free. We will create a blog from scratch, show you several established blogs, and leave you with a host of tips for maintaining a blog of your very own. This workshop will be offered during the afternoon session only.

As a bonus, each junior high and elementary teacher will receive a 1 gig flash drive during the morning session! The flash drive remains school property, but is yours to use for any school-related work. The sessions on Jeopardy and PowerPoint would require a flash drive for you to save your creations from those sessions. Following the workshop on Digital Data, you would need a flash drive to backup the work you already have on your computer in case your hard drive ever crashed.

Technology is a tool that we will either manage or it will manage us. The point of planning this day the way we have is to help you become more comfortable and more productive with the technology which is available to you.