Professional Development
2016-2017
CS Principles AP Summer Institute
In July of 2016 I attended a College Board AP summer Institute for the new Computer Science Principles course. This was the first year for this course. I had previously attended 3 AP Summer Institutes, two for Calculus and one for CS A, all three of which were fantastic. My expectations may have been a little bit high because I came out disappointed! This course had not yet been taught, so no one (including the instructor) had experience with the curriculum or the exam. The college board does not endorse any particular learning platform or language, so the presenter could speak only in broad generalities. We spent a long time reading out of those blue curriculum books that no one ever really reads cover to cover.
On the positive side, I did make some connections in the field. I learned the most from the other CS teachers in the room. Connections for collaboration were made, and I did gain a better idea of the broad purpose of the course.
Adobe Chat Sessions
I am always looking for ideas to boost interactivity of my live session, so I watched the recording of the ADOBE Connect opportunity which was presented by Carrie and Carlos in March 2017. They both offered great tips for making the session more effective and efficient. I think Carlos has convinced me to invest some time in creating layouts. I have several different layouts that I like to use, but I don't usually save them and then end up spending more time on the back end recreating the set-up. He gave a peek into his live classroom where everything was wonderfully organized. He also provided a great reminder about using interactive games by sharing his scrabble game with us. Carrie began by reviewing policy and talking about acceptable ways to fulfill the policy. I liked the idea of having two questions polls open if multiple classes are meeting at the same time. This way students can see all questions and know that their question will be answered in turn. She also gave great tips for getting students to show up to class, including offering extra points that are only available to those who view the live session or recording. Carrie reminded us of the power of enabling students to draw on the interactive white board, which is a fantastic tool in math. At the end of the session Carlos encouraged everyone to collaborate with colleagues. I am hoping to collaborate for the first time this summer.
Spring PLS 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed PLS this spring. We had time in our department for collaboration, so I was able to meet and work with several colleagues who teach similar courses. We are planning to work together on our summer courses!
We also got a chance to see our colleagues present their exemplary practices. My biggest take-away was creating and organizing feedback using Google Docs. I had been using O365 and one note, which requires copying and pasting html code. It turns out that you can copy and paste directly from google docs to Brightspace. I had tried this a while back without success, but now Brightspace has been updated so that this works beautifully. This will probably save me about 100,00 clicks over the next year.