Teaching and Technology Cohort Takes Off

This fall, 29 teachers from Edina embarked on a Teaching and Technology Certificate program through Hamline University.
Funded through a grant from the Edina Education Fund, the teachers started the program in a course called, Creating Community for All Learners. Through the course, they worked to form their own community, gained understanding of the importance of sharing, and how technology can be used to connect and collaborate. We created a hashtag on Twitter (#edinatt), and invited participants to share with one another.

The course was delivered in a "blended" format of face to face and online, and the participants described their learning experience as:

One of the activities involved creating their own metaphor for educational technology. The examples cohort members came up with ranged from a steamroller, an 8th grade boy and running a marathon to a rainbow, rain on a farmers field and a tapestry!

A definite highlight was the final face to face session, where groups created a community building activity and "taught" it to the rest of the class. The groups created lesson plans for these activities that can be found here. Some of the activities involve Webcams, and Technology tools such as:

The final assignment involved a plan for how they would create community in their classroom. They can be found in the portfolios on our public Website.

After a break, the cohort will pick up again January 25th with a class on Integrating Technology. This experience is providing staff with a 21st Century learning experience that will provide them with skills to enhance their instruction with technology.