SimpleK12 Logo |
Teachers like to stay informed on the latest strategies,
technologies, and innovations that can improve student learning. However doing so takes a lot of time and
often money. Well, SimpleK12 is making informal professional development much easier by offering a variety
of free webinars that generally last 30 to 60 minutes.
Let me start by saying that I am in no way affiliated with
SimpleK12. I just like their
resources.
Today I participated in a webinar entitled: Bringing your
Textbook to Life. The presenter, Shelly Terrell, did a great job of quickly
introducing seventeen tips to help make textbooks more interesting and engaging for students. These ideas ranged from games to small group
work to using technology. Although there were many great ideas, the resource that stood out to me the most was an
app/website called popplet that allows you and your
students to create concept maps with words and pictures. It will be a great resource especially for
content areas like history, social studies, science, etc.
popplet Logo |
Many other free webinars are coming up from SimpleK12. You can find a list of them and register for
them here.
SimpleK12 also provides many webinars
on-demand so you can watch them whenever you have time. However, in order to watch the on-demand
webinars, you need to sign up for a full membership, which costs a bit of
money. A few on-demand titles that sound
interesting are: Increase Student Productivity with Free iPad Apps,
Project Based Learning through Mobile Devices,
and Teaching Reading in the Digital Age. But again, they cost money (just under $300
for a year’s subscription to the site).
SimpleK12 offers more than webinars. There are also a lot of resources,
collaboration, and learning tools, but for many of these materials you can only access them with a
full membership. Overall, the free
webinars provide a quick way for teachers to stay up-to-date on innovative and
interesting strategies for their classrooms.
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