Classroom Learning 2.0 - Professional Development

An invitation to improve the performance of your education team.

School districts and other educational groups are invited to offer a fun, new online professional development course for classroom teachers, administrators, and other educators. This 9-week course introduces educators to web 2.0 tools and curriculum connections.

Classroom Learning 2.0 participants learn about and use social networking tools such as blogs, image generators, avatars, RSS feeds, wikis, nings, and much more. This course and its accompanying Management/Users Guide is brought to you by the California School Library Association 2.0 Team at no charge. It supports a number of legislative programs such as school technology plan requirements for E-Rate and Module III of AB430 administrator training. Continuing Education credits for the course are also available for a modest fee through Fresno Pacific University.

Designed for classroom teachers, administrators and other educators, this on-line course introduces participants to the many exciting web 2.0 tools available to us to communicate more effectively and creatively in a wide variety of activities. This tutorial introduces educators to many new opportunities for developing dynamic lessons, and shows how to work with colleagues in the school library to create exciting standards-based lessons that will reach students with the tools that they use daily.

Classroom Learning 2.0 is a specially designed course in that each participant learns about the web 2.0 tools and actively participates in a collegial conversation using the applications that they are learning about. Web 2.0 refers to the fact that the Internet is now an interactive medium rather than a ‘place’ to go to get information. Because students are flocking to these Web 2.0 sites, it is important that those of us who work in schools should be up-to-date with the latest trends in educational technology and learn how they can be utilized to support student learning.

Participants can take the course on their own, or they can lead a site group, a district group, or a group of interested teachers. An organization can offer incentives, create collegial work groups, and/or provide on-site workshops to support the course. Forming groups allow for participants to ‘cheer’ one another along, problem solve together, and begin conversations that lead to exciting collaborations.

If your library personnel are already graduates of our first professional development program, School Library Learning 2.0, you have a partner who can help you develop a 2.0 Partners group. Both online courses are available for free during the 2007-2008 school year. To learn more about these courses and to get a copy of the Management/User’s Guide, please contact Connie Williams or me at CSLA2Team@yahoo.com.