Anytime, Anywhere After recently writing about Ditch Summit and after having time to try out Microsoft Education a bit more, I want to share about some professional development and online certification opportunities that can be done anytime and anywhere. I know I've already mentioned how to become Flipgrid Certified, which might have actually been my first online certification with educational technology. I know that several other educational technology platforms/softwares/etc. have similar certifications. (Side note - some of those cost money, and personally I feel like they should all be free. Now I realize some of them are only $10, but educators are already buying PD books, school supplies, etc. out of our own pockets. Plus if educators like your product and see it positively impacting their students, they'll spread the word to other teachers. Why charge a fee? Needless to say, I stick to the free ones.)
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Let me preface by saying that Ditch that Textbook Digital Summit ends in 4 days on Dec. 31! So if you're reading this before the videos go offline, head over there ASAP to view the ones that call out to you. (You can always go to Matt Miller's main site too after his summit is over.)
Online professional development can be such a great way to learn from the comfort of our own homes. I typically prefer in person PD and conferences, but sometimes those aren't in the cards (like when I was on maternity leave and taking care of a newborn this past summer). Plus online PDs can broaden your horizons, as they're sometimes national or global in scale. I started getting into online PD back with EdCamp Global a few years ago (they've since changed their name to EdChange Global), and then I got into EdCamp Voice and NotAtIste the past two years. I would highly recommend all 3 of those and have learned from each of them and plan to participate in them again. All three of them are highly interactive and have so many options for how to be involved and what you want to learn about. These interactions also provided me with so many new, amazing educators to follow and connect with via Twitter. These online PDs also introduced me to some of my favorite educational technology tools that I still use (Flipgrid, Piktochart, Canva, etc.) as well as expanding my thinking and creating open dialogue around topics key to education. That being said, I find webinar-esque PD to be rather hit and miss, and recently I stumbled upon a tweet by a fellow teacher in my district about Matt Miller's Ditch that Textbook Digital Summit. I figured I could listen to some of them during some of my holiday season driving, and I'm SO glad I saw that tweet. At the time I'm writing this, I've already listened to 4.5 of the 9 (I need to go back and finish some obviously). I want to dive into the two that have stayed with me the most so far and some of my takeaways. |