Workshops

Keynote Address: Qatar Google Apps Summit

School Wide Weekend Workshops

These workshops are longer in duration and may start with a Friday afternoon consultation followed by Saturday work time followed by a Sunday morning culmination. All activities are a hands-on, research based means to support pedagogy with technology infusion.

Implementing Google Apps at Your School

So your school has adopted Google, now what? Schools that move to the Google apps suite will learn a lot very quickly, however, the challenge of how to use these tools in education often comes with teachers that don't utilize them to their full potential. In this session, we give an overview to the Google apps suite of tools followed by their applications to jigsaw scenarios to apply these into practice.

Google Educator Bootcamp-Level 1 and 2

As many schools are 'Going Google' earning one's Google Educator status can not only add shine to a CV but signal to schools that you know how to use their information backbone and will be a seamless fit to their institution. In this 1 day workshop, candidates will undergo training throughout 4 modules of study to prepare them for the afternoon session of earning their Google Level 1 or 2 certification.

Standards Based Teaching and Learning

What is often seen as a bit 'dry' in many education circles, horizontal and vertical standards alignment is so important but often threatens the work that teachers have put into building existing projects and assessments. In this series, teachers do an audit of their standards and created a common vision to support their implementation through scaffolded formative and summative assessment, culminating with an assessment blueprint for transparency. *Note: This is best done in conjunction with the school's curriculum coordinator and can be tailored to any curriculum housing platform such as ATLAS rubicon.

Design Thinking in Education

Design thinking is not just for design teachers, it can be used across humanities and the science to ideate, define, prototype and test. This cyclical process is the essence of learning and gives participants the opportunity to learn from one's mistakes and put critical thinking into action.

Reinventing Science Education with Technology

As a former science teacher who avidly used technology in my practice, I came to use educational technology to support a number of authentic, real-world projects that transformed what is possible in science education. Sadly, many current students are not given the opportunity to practice science similarly to how professionals do in their practice. In this series, we reframe what science education is and what it can be with examples of student work ranging from creating science journals, learning products supporting UN development goals, and ideas for global collaboration and data sharing.

Project Based Learning-From Ideas to Practice

This workshop has 4 modules to help teams integrate PBL into their practice. Module 1 starts by teams delving into professional literature by department to 'ground' the vision for putting PBL into their practice. Following this, teams will then address the thorny issue of standards and assessment which can be quite challenging but also learn solutions to apply to a PBL timeline. Following this, participants will participate in a 'Critical Friends Group' protocol to help a colleague develop a unit into a PBL framework and culminate with a 'Gallery Walk' of future projects to be put into practice.

1 Hour Teacher Workshops

One hour workshops are more manageable in terms of time and are more succinct in their delivery. Because of this, the following topics are one hour in duration and will leave participant with take-aways that they can immediately implement in their practice rather than whole school initiatives. Interested schools should look through the list and consult their teams to see which workshops may be of interest and choose ones based on interest.

Digital Portfolios-Research, Fact, Fiction and Deployment

Digital portfolios have many great applications. To show off and display learning for an IB personal or mission project or to practice digital literacy skills such a digital etiquette through commenting and building an online profile; portfolios can do it all. This workshop can be a truncated 1 hour session or a longer 3 hour session. Applications include building a community of student readers or writers in blogger, a platform for student-led conferences and parent or community newsletters.

60 Chrome Apps and Extensions in 60 Minutes

Chrome extensions have immediate applications to classroom teaching and learning and are super cool! In this session, we start be exploring the difference between an 'app' and an 'extension' and highlighting 5 invaluable tools that teachers can use in their practice through a direct demonstration. Following this, teachers will have time to 'explore' the other 55 listed chrome apps and extensions and finish by sharing ones they think will have immediate use in their classroom.

Voice Commenting Tools to Save you Time Grading

Teachers spend an impossible amount of time grading and much of the feedback we give often goes un-acted upon by students. Luckily, there has been an explosion of tools that have supported voice commenting which can be done 5-7 times faster than writing by hand. In this session, we explore two tools for giving voice commenting feedback and how youtube integration can also ensure accountability in the feedback process.

Collaborative Discussion through Close Reading and NewsELA

Collaborative discussion is a model for discussing a text in depth to understand its key points and also give students the opportunity to debate its points. NewsELA is a current events platform that curates journal articles from around the world into different reading (Lexile) levels. Whereas many teachers are familiar with 'literature circles' in small groups, collaborative discussion is a whole class model wherein students work in a 'fishbowl' model of discussers, microbloggers and assessors to actively engage in community reading that is fun and very powerful.

Formative Assessment in the Digital Age

There are a host of tools that can now help educators with assessment and save them time. In this session, teachers will have the opportunity to explore digital platforms for assessing student learning that are quick to make and often have public galleries with customizable questions. For any teacher that is pressed for time, this is a great session!

Building your Professional Learning Network with Twitter

Kevin Honeycutt once said that with Twitter, "You can hold 10,000 educators in the palm of your hand". Being able to tap into the collective wisdom of so many is both empowering but also daunting. Trying to get information from Twitter is like trying to get a sip of water from a fire hydrant. In this session, we'll focus on building profiles, hashtags, community engagement and creating a school hashtag to share your school culture.

Geeking Out With Google Sheets

Google sheets have some super easy uses for regular classroom teacher. Still, many teachers assume that Google sheets are only for math teachers! I start with introduction to some basic features of Google sheets such as 'fill color', 'text wrapping', 'conditional formatting' and 'freezing' columns and rows to track reading progress followed by some more complex tasks such as data validation and merging and sorting student reading data of a sample of MAP test scores.

Mapping our World with Google Maps

One of the more underutilized uses of Google is the myriad of mapping tools that they provide. These have numerous applications such a mapping local pollution data, creating project timelines, identifying environmental concerns and simply just telling a story for a piece of student work. In this session, we'll see examples of 'Smart Pins', 'Google Lit Trips', 'Spreadsheet Layers' and 'Google Arts and Culture' and collaborative mapping with 'My Maps'

Administrator Workshops

These are workshops designed for the leadership team, namely principals, curriculum coordinators heads of school and some may be relevant to department chairs or subject area leads. These workshop are longer in duration (usually 2-4 hours) and examine policies and programs at schools that leadership teams should put into practice cyclical, recurring professional development.

Social Media in the Digital Age: Problems and Solutions

Effectively Preparing Your School for the Next Pandemic

These are workshops designed for the leadership team, namely principals, curriculum coordinators heads of school and some may be relevant to department chairs or subject area leads. These workshop are longer in duration (usually 2-4 hours) and examine policies and programs at schools that leadership teams should put into practice cyclical, recurring professional development.

Institutions that were better prepared for COVID 19 saw fewer disruptions to their student's learning and overall education than schools that did not. As educators around the world evolved and adapted to the situation, systems were created meticulously (and some hap-hazardly) as the crisis unfolded but with the ever changing turnover of staff in international education, how can we ensure a robust system is in place for when the next crisis hits?
In this session, participants will start by learning a short history of the World Virtual Schools project started by the conflict in Pakistan and how a core group of leaders around the world with a common interest in continuing education by leveraging technology and shifting pedagogy helped schools shift to online learning through building systems. Following this, participants will engage in a 'Tabletop Exercise' to share strategies and documents they have put in place, but also address and anticipate the myriad of school communication with school stakeholders, LMS readiness and creating short and long term plans of action during role play, crisis scenarios.

UBD Curriculum Mapping

Understanding by Design is a framework for deconstructing curriculum to its essential points. Starting with a good essential question, curriculum is broken down by skills, knowledge and how learning activities will support the learning objectives and learning standards. This approach is much more thorough than the typical 'spray and pray' curriculum or suitcase activities many teachers take with them from school to school.
In this session, I share the merits of using UBD (and Atlas Rubicon for vertical alignment) led by my work with Jay McTighe who wrote the book on 'Understanding by Design'. I start with exemplars for reference and benefits to moving your schools curriculum to UBD maps for the two-pronged purpose of both accreditation purposes and curricular alignment.
However, the process of UBD mapping can seem like such a chore for faculty that have already busy schedules, so we will also audit your existing approaches and where you are in the curriculum review process and create a school timeline for achieving UBD soft and hard implementation.

Grading What Matters

Does your school have a coherent and clear assessment policy? Do teachers grade on completion, effort or other habits of learning rather than actual standards? Is grade inflation or deflation a problem? Grading is the last bastion where many teachers feel they have 'choice', however, some well-meaning educators inadvertently create high-stakes environments where 'everything' is graded to incentivize and motivate students to complete work.
Inspired by my work with Tom Schimmer and Jennifer Sparrow, this workshop creates a framework for administrators to evaluate existing school practices, help navigate staff push-back and provide options for assessment design that save teachers time and also give alternatives and clarity for drafting retake policies and reassessment in ways that students don't 'game' the system of summative assessments.

Worksheet Adds on for Institutional Efficiency

In this series, we'll explore a number of add-ons from the Google spreadsheet gallery such as autocrat for document creation, choice eliminator for survey sign ups, form mule for email protocols, form ranger for recurring surveys and other easy to use utilities such as 'another email merge'.