PD-Lessons-Ideas

Digital Resources with Instructional Ideas & Materials, Lessons and Units of Study

There are hundreds of online resources that educators can draw from to help in lesson and unit design. Here are a few well-documented sites to add to your lesson creation toolkit and Personal Learning Network (PLN). You might run across some terms along the way that deal with "ed tech" (Educational Technology). Here is a glossary of Ed Tech terms to help with your understanding. Look to find the sites and resources that help you with lesson design as well as in personalizing your learning.

• Annenberg Learner: Site for content media, lessons and professional learning. Look to sign up for their newsletter.

• Better Lesson: Database of shared math and language arts lessons to meet Common Core standards.

• Canvas Network of MOOCs: Canvas is a LMS that provides some free online courses for teachers.

• C3 Teachers (College Career & Civic Life) inquiry Design Model (IDM): Access their inquiry units of study.

• Chemistry videos offered concepts in stories by MIT Ph. D Tyler Dewitt who used to teach high school.

• Chrome extensions to simplify and provide different modalities to assist in reading digital information.

• CK-12 for Teacher and Student Math & Science resources

• Common Craft Videos: Videos to support instruction on various topics.

• Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship: Scope and sequence of lessons is provided for educators to use in their teaching.

• Common Sense Media Lesson Listing: See their list of top lesson providing sites. There is some overlap with the offerings here.

• Crash Course: Animated short videos covering topics across multiple disciplines. Great for blended learning.

• Curriki: Search, save, and share your favorite lessons and units of study.

• Defined STEM: Fee site loaded with Understanding by Design lessons and Jay McTighe style performance tasks. A great introduction to the site along with sample lessons is through Jay's 7 part blog series on performance tasks.

• Design in Presentations: It is so import to help guide our students to design their presentation to be image rich with limited text and few distractions.

• Design using CARP: Review Ms. Pana's page on using Contrast - Alignment - Repetition - Proximity in teaching good design.

• Discovery Education: Lesson plan library from Discovery Communications.

• EDpuzzle: Video curation resource.

• EDSITEment for Humanities: The National Endowment for the Arts lesson library.

• Education: A website by teachers sharing their lessons.

• Education World: "original content, including lesson plans, practical information for educators, information on how to integrate technology in the classroom, and articles written by education experts."

• Educational Video Channels: Explore this listing of videos covering subjects from art through science.

• Edutube: Educational videos.

• EdWeb Webinars: A professional learning community with ongoing free webinars.

• Epic! for Educators: Access 35,000 eBooks, Learning Videos and Quizzes for K-5.

• Español Extra: Spanish language flashcards, assessments, games and other resources.

• ESPRAT+G: This acronym for Economy, Society, Political Structure, Religion, the Arts, Technology and the affects of Geography across these themes is a helpful construct to teaching culture and civilization. GRAPES is a similar acronym.

• Facing History and Ourselves (Teaching Strategies): The detailed instructional strategies work across disciplines. Select the picture above the strategy to access the details.

• Explania.com: Animated explanations and interactive tutorials.

• Flipgrid: A platform for students to provide video responses.

• Genius Hour: Learn about ways to give students time to be independent inquirers, problem solvers and creative.

• Global Digital Citizen Foundation: Fee site loaded with ICL integrated lessons and resources. Excellent blog as well.

• Goconqr: Student and teacher generated lessons and resources.

• Google in Education: Searchable lessons that connects Google apps to lessons.

• Google Cultural Institute: Use this database of art from leading museums to bring art into your lessons (See Field Trips in Pedagogy A-M for more info).

• Gooru: Find, customize, and share lessons.

• Great Websites for Kids: Sponsored by the American Library Association

• Henrico21: Henrico County Schools 21st Century teaching and learning resource site

• History through Inquiry: The Stanford US and World History lessons put the students in the role of historian using inquiry to learn.

• iCivics: Lessons, tools and resources to teach government and citizenship.

• IOER- Illinois Open Educational Resources: searchable by topic for remixing and adapting.

• iTunes U: Much of the content is for older students but you can find curriculum for younger students.

• K20 Center University of Oklahoma: Instructional Strategies for K-20.

• Kahoot: Create games and quizzes to support your lessons.

• Khan Academy: Much more than just math lessons as this growing open educational resources (OER) site offers a lot for students and teachers.

• LearnZillion: Ideas, lessons and more to help students and teachers.

• Listenwise: Educational podcasts to share with your students.

• McREL: Lesson plans that fit the Common Core and McREL Compendium.

• MIT + K12 Videos: Wide range of STEM topics explained in videos created by MIT students.

• New York Times Learning Network: Lesson ideas drawn from their articles.

• NSRF Original Protocols and Activities....from A to Z: Routines and protocols to support a vast amount of situations. For categories go to "Free Resources" > "Protocols". Incredible resource to find new instructional strategies!

• OER Commons: Search open educational resources.

• Ology from the American Museum of Natural History: A science resource site for students.

• Open Culture: Free media sources of art, audio books, eBooks, foreign language learning, literature, math, music, science, social studies, and tutorials.

• OpenEd: K-12 resource library with lessons, assessments, videos and more.

• Podcasts: Search the Web and iTunes for podcasts that support your units of study.

• PBS LearningMedia: Images, videos, and lesson plans from PBS.

• PBS TeacherLine: Online courses providing the flexibility to take at your own pace.

• Pinterest: Save and share lessons and other teaching resources.

• Quizlet: Digital flashcards that you and/or your students can create or you can use from a huge database on a vast number of topics.

• RAT Model for Technology Integration: A much simpler construct to use as you design your lessons.

• ReadTheory: Set up a class account and receive data on your students' reading.

• Read-Write-Think: Materials to support reading and Language Arts.

• RSS Feeds & Aggregators: Learn how you can have your favorite blogs, podcasts, journals, etc aggregated in one place for easy reviewing.

• Rubistar: Rubrics for all content areas and assessment types.

• Rubrics for Assessment: University of Wisconsin- Stout provides rubrics for tech-based projects.

• Safeshare: This online tool provides a "skin" around YouTube and other sites to cover any side video links.

• SAS Curriculum Pathways: Resource site searchable by discipline, grade level or standard.

• SMART Exchange: Search for lesson ideas and notebooks to download to your SMART board.

• Smart History: World art history.

• STEM Resource Finder: The Concord Consortium provides several helpful resources.

• STEM Resources: Wonderful listing for students and teachers provided by the Global Digital Citizen Foundation.

• Teach with Movies: This database lists movies by discipline including descriptions and worksheets to guide student analysis.

• Teacher Training Videos: A European-based provider of online video tutorials on a wide range of tools and strategies.

• Teachers Pay Teachers: A marketplace for teachers to sell their lessons and resources.

• Teaching Channel: Videos documenting real classroom pedagogy, assessments, etc.

• TED-Ed: Rich resources from the TED library including technology to annotate their videos or any YouTube media.

• The Kid Should See This: A curated list of videos for students and adults on a variety of topics.

• TPACK: Technology-Pedagogy-Content Knowledge> An approach to technology supporting pedagogy and content.

• Vooks: Animate storybooks.

• WatchKnowLearn: Vast curation of educational videos across the disciplines.

Personalized Learning for PD

Professional development is increasingly being described in terms of personalized learning with individuals having control over how they spend their learning time not just for work but also for personal growth. This practice connects educators to a larger network of co-learners and resources. Just as we work to individualize and personalize learning for students, we do the same for teachers who are empowered to design their own "PD" with the "P" representing personal and professional. Learning has no boundaries as we pull in and share information in our network feeding our curiosity whether it be for Thai cooking, core strength training, differentiated instruction or using multimedia in assessments. For a deeper description of personalized learning look to check out the EdTech Co-Op podcast Personalizing PD.

Feb 2021 Update - I reached out to Jeff Utecht who was my podcasting partner and who now runs the Shifting Schools educational consultancy company. He came up with an approach for individuals and groups of educators to listen to educational podcasts to really make meaning of them. Here is Jeff's approach to personalizing podcasts for learning.

A couple places to get a feel for this shift in professional learning are the EdSurge blog for field reports on how various schools and districts are "remixing" their PD and a white paper entitled Solving the Professional Learning Crisis.

The familiar approach to professional development is to attend workshops in one's school and/or to travel to conferences. A shift has occurred which now puts the individual educator at the center of the professional learning process. Instead of relying on in-person, infrequent sources for development, educators now create Personal Learning Networks (PLN) made up of digital learning resources and people. PLNs not only provide learning opportunities but they also build community by offering a forum for sharing ideas and collaborating with others. Speak with connected colleagues to learn more about using educator blogs, Twitter, podcasts, Nings and other digital resources to construct a PLN to meet your personal learning needs. The following are a few avenues to get you started. You might want to start with the PLN Creation Sources listed below to build your foundation understanding of Personal Learning Networks.

• Bam Radio: A collection of education focused podcasts.

• Blogs: See one of the ICL team to help you find teacher bloggers writing about classroom practices. One place to start is the Teach 100 ranking of education blogs.

• Classroom 2.0: A Ning for teachers interested in sharing ideas about learning enhanced by using digital resources.

• COETAIL Community: International teachers taking Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) courses together. Rich learning via their blogs.

• Coursera: Access their free online courses including ones for educators.

• Eduro Learning: Online courses on topics such as gamification, connected classroom, blended learning, etc.

• Edutopia: Online magazine for educators covering wide range of topics.

• Feedly: A newsreader that you can use to subscribe to blogs and podcasts.

• iBooks: Download the app to then search the catalog for books.

• ICL Terminology Support: Several "cheat sheets" offering summaries and clear definitions for terms like MOOC, gamification, Tweets and flipped classroom.

• iTunes: Excellent software for educational podcasts on your Macbook, iPhone or iPad. You also find iTunes U in iTunes.

• Merlot Pedagogy: Over 1300 resources for professional development.

• The New Media Consortium annually publishes a report on trends in education looking out five years.

• Tech Talk America by David Cox: David has wonderful tutorials at his YouTube channel.

• PLN Creation Resources: Tips for Starting Your PLN | 20 Ways to Improve Your PLN | Video Description of PLN's

• Podcasts: See one of your podcasting listening colleagues to help you find educational podcasts produced by teachers. iTunes is a helpful place to search for podcasts.

• iTunes University: Download the app and get connected to learning opportunities using the catalog feature.

• Study Guides: Provided from Marzano, DuFour and many other educational leaders.

• Teacher Tube: Student and teacher created videos for instructional ideas and a place to store your own videos.

• Teaching Channel: Videos showcasing effective pedagogy.

• Teaching with Digital Tools: Over 30 tutorials on tools and techniques such as blogs, Google apps and enhancing creativity.

• Twitter: See one of your Twitter connected colleagues to help you find educators sharing great ideas via their tweets as well as communities around hashtags. You can follow individuals and/or hashtag communities. Look to go use the Twitter Search page to search for hashtag communities. Learn how you can find hashtag communities where folks share helpful resources. Also look to see if Twitter can support learning in your classroom. Here are several helpful blog posts: Twitter in Elementary | Social Media in Elementary | Twitter in Primary | Twitter Tips & Tools | Slideshow Using Twitter K-8

• Video Resources: A listing of 100 video providing sites for educators.