The following post was submitted by CMLE scholarship recipient Debbie Disher,  Media Specialist at Holdingford Schools

TIES 2013 Conference – Fast Forward; Transforming Pedagogy with Technology

After missing last years TIES Conference I went to the December’s conference with great excitement and anticipation.  I was not disappointed.  I found myself in several great sessions covering technology and staff development.

One of the things that I took away from the conference was the need for me to change our staff development for technology.  Although I am always encouraging teachers that we need to change the way our classrooms operate, I realized that our staff development hasn’t changed that much.  In a session by Kriss Zajner he shared his passion for technology and how they are doing staff development in his district.  He shared how they are using Twitter, mini sessions, 15 minute sessions, continuous learning and sharing, etc.

Another great session was “IGNITE Technology – Enhanced Professional Development” presented by 4 different schools.  Some of the key points in this session included:

• •making staff development fun
• •making it about students and their achievement – not the software/hardware
• •sharing not presenting
• •make it comfortable – maybe a different location
• •tech camps.

Because of these sessions we will be working on several changes for our technology staff development.  We plan to start some weekly introduction sessions, Tweeting and making staff development sessions fun.