Using+a+Web+Platform+for+Your+Professional+Development

== In this session you will be learning how to optimize the web tools available to you at your school to create a hub of technology professional development. We create a good deal of resources to support our teachers, but rarely keep it organized and all in one place. The purpose of this session is to help you create a web site to support your teachers and students.
 * Using a Web Platform for Your Professional Development **

=Goals= Participants in this session will evaluate web tools and either create or enhance a professional development web site for their school's professional development needs.

Brainstorm
What are your goals for this session?

=Outcomes= At the end of this session, you will be able to:
 * Evaluate professional development website
 * Organize and structure your own website
 * Create or enhance a website for your school

=Questions to Consider=
 * 1) What do your teachers need in a professional development website?
 * 2) What tools are you already using that could be used to create/enhance a PD website?
 * 3) What do you have time to keep updated in a reasonable fashion?
 * 4) Usability of the website from both a creator and user standpoint.

=Activity 1: What makes a good PD Website?= Example PD websites:
 * ====Henrico Staff Development====
 * ====Lee County Schools ====
 * ====Granville County Schools Technology Tuesdays ====
 * ====McDowell County Schools Technology====
 * ====thedaringlibrarian ====
 * ====pcs-tech.net====
 * ====Van Meter Elementary Library & Tech Voice====
 * ====YIS IT Department====
 * ====westwood - home====
 * ====WSFCS / FrontPage====

PD Website Evaluation Form Form Results

What aspects of these websites would you like to incorporate into your own?
=Activity 2: Choosing a Platform=

You may already have a platform in mind, but let's discuss the options available and how they will fit your needs. =Web Tools for PD=
 * || **Moodle/Blackboard** || **Wiki** || **Blog** || **Stand-alone Website** ||
 * **Pros** || Using a Learning Management System (LMS) that is already in use at your school can be a great hub of your technology PD needs. They can see the course when they log-in and they are not having to go to one more place. || Wikis are a free and easy way to organize content for your faculty. || Blogs can be a great way to keep your faculty up to date with the latest technological innovations. Blogs can also be used as easy stand-alone websites - they can be much more than journal entries. || Stand alone websites such as Google SItes and Weebly can give you the freedom to create a page from scratch and really create what you need. ||
 * **Cons** || If your school is not using an LMS, this may not be as useful for your faculty. LMS' tend to be very sequentially driven and may not allow for faculty to just use the aspects they need. || Wikis don't always look as nice as other options and can be a bit plain. || When using a blog you need to commit to keeping it up to date. || Stand alone websites may take more time to set-up and some tools (such as Google Sites) have some of the same design constraints that Wikis do. ||
 * media type="custom" key="10745056" || media type="custom" key="10745064" ||

=Activity 3: Working on your own Website= Building upon the previous activities, this time will be used to either create or enhance your own PD website for your school. Link your website here!

=Reflection= Click Here to Begin the Reflection Process

=Template=