Welcome!

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Welcome to this first online seminar series sponsored by Kappa Delta Pi, a highly regarded educational honors society based in Indianapolis, USA, and Mount Royal University’s Faculty of Continuing Education and Extension, a longstanding educational organization situated in Calgary, Canada.

You may explore this Edublog site by using the menus above and to the left to navigate through information about the seminars and the July 2016 conference associated with the seminar series.

We invite you to review the position statements and videos associated with the seminars and to post your comments, questions, and observations to our blog. We also believe that the July conference in Calgary will provide an outstanding opportunity to learn and network with other deeply committed educational professionals.

Enjoy! And please invite your colleagues and friends to join us in this unique professional development initiative!

Sincerely,

Faye Snodgress and Peggy Moch, Kappa Delta Pi

Charles Webber and Jodi Nickel, Mount Royal University

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Simulation as a technique for rehearsal and acquiring practical experience

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Simulation is a technique for rehearsal and for acquiring practical experience that can be applied to any practical application of knowledge. It is a technique (not a technology) to replicate and amplify real experiences with guided instruction, often immersive in nature, that evoke or replicate substantial aspects of the real world in a fully interactive fashion. Immersive here implies that participants are engaged in a task or setting as if it were in the real world.

See video–Valdosta State University:  https://youtu.be/0Gh38f0sGi8

  • How would or could you use simulations in your classroom?
  • What might simulations allow you to observe that could not be accomplished any other way?

Using electronic devices to improve and enhance learning

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Many times we invite our students to turn off or put away their electronic devices and see them as distractions in the classroom. But what if we could incorporate those electronic devices to help improve and enhance learning? The following video is a presentation on using quick response codes (QR codes).  QR codes can be used to augment lessons in the classroom utilizing the smart phones nearly all students already possess.

See video: Dr. Sonya Sanderson, Dr. Peggy Moch, and Ms. Sandi Masci:

https://valdosta.sharestream.net/ssdcms/ipublic.do?u=0f7323064e054c8

  • How could/would you use QR codes in a classroom or workshop?
  • What other types of electronic innovations would you like to share with the group?

Teacher Professionalism

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Please see the opening statement created by Dr. Shelley Scott, Dr. Elaine Fournier, and Dr. Don Scott on the MRU-KDP seminar series website: http://www.kdp-mru2016.com/preliminary-seminar-series-2/seminar-3/

This online seminar is an outstanding opportunity to discuss the topic of teacher professionalism with international colleagues. My thanks to the seminar facilitators for leading this initiative.

Charlie Webber

Teacher Leadership Seminar

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My sincere thanks to Dr. Cheryl Bauman, Dr. Susan Lovett, Dr. Clelia Pineda Baez, and Dr. Dorothy Andrews for the videos that they have created to address the topic of teacher leadership. Their presentations ask some important questions that merit attention:

What do we envision as being required to enable teacher leadership within our organizations?

What is needed to support the next generation of leaders?

Why is it that talented early career teachers do not want to move into leadership roles?

What are the necessary values and qualities of teacher leaders?

I encourage all of us involved in this online seminar to address these and other key questions as we interrogate our understandings of teacher leadership.

Thank you.

Charlie Webber, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada

Professional learning and context…

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I appreciate the definition of professional learning proposed by the Seminar 1 planning team, particularly the focus on context. In my experience, it is important to understand that context is complex and can include cultural influences, which we can recognize fairly consistently, but also temporal influences. For example, the composition of staff members and the leadership team reflects the impact of age and career stage, all of which are influenced yet again by the age and stage of the organization.

For instance, is anyone in the process of facilitating professional learning in a long established organization with long serving staff? How about in an organization that has experienced a recent high level of staff turnover? How’s that going for you? (That’s a rhetorical question as we don’t want to name names!) 🙂