While we may use technology on a daily basis outside of the school day, integrating its use into the classroom for the first time can be a daunting task. In this course, learn how to help your students use technology in ways that develop 21st century skills.
PBS TeacherLine has created five new professional development graduate-level courses that include resources from Annenberg Learner, a leading creator of pedagogy and content courses for teacher professional development. The Annenberg content expands PBS TeacherLine’s course catalog to include history and strengthens existing math and science course offerings.
SOST502 Bridging World History: A Special Collection from the Annenberg Foundation (Gr 9-12)
24 Courses Approved for SC ePortfolio Technology Credits
The SCDoE has approved 24 PBS TeacherLine courses, to date, for ePortfolio Technology credits. See the list of courses on our Credit page under the ePortfolio section.
Consistent with its efforts to support the development of professional, quality content for education, the AEP leads an extensive awards program to honor excellence among companies, individuals, and resources.
To receive an AEP award is considered one of the highest honors for an individual or company in the field.
PBS TeacherLine has updated two more of our technology integration courses to address 21st century skills and incorporate the latest Web 2.0 tools. With these updates, nearly all of the PBS TeacherLine instructional technology courses now reflect the expanded role of technology in K-12 classrooms.
The recently updated technology integration courses include:
TECH145: Teaching with WebQuests for Grades K-12
[See syllabus; check for upcoming Course Offerings]
Through the course, educators discover new Web resources that promote inquiry-oriented student learning and smart use of the Web for research and class assignments. Teachers explore WebQuests and learn to effectively integrate the latest Internet and Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. Learners design a WebQuest to enhance a classroom unit or curriculum area.
TECH335: Publishing on the Web (Gr K-12)
[See syllabus; check for upcoming Course Offerings]
Online publishing with and for today’s students, known as the "iGeneration," is becoming an integral element of the classroom experience as digital media technologies have permeated Americans’ personal and professional lives. The logistics of publishing on the Web are no longer a challenging process. The options and goals for publishing are limitless—tools that can create classroom Web sites, educational blogs, learning portals, wikis, and social media sites are easily accessible. The challenge for both teachers and students is to learn to use the Web wisely and meaningfully, and to be digitally literate. This course helps educators understand: the reasons for publishing on the Web and for developing a positive online presence; the methods and tools available for educational Web publishing; how to present content on the Web; the importance of following social media guidelines in schools; and the opportunity to publish online—both for students and educators—to grow academically and professionally.
PBS TeacherLine Aligns Courses To Common Core State Standards!
As states implement Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics, educators face substantial challenges adapting their instruction to match the new framework. The standards have been approved in 45 states and the District of Columbia, and many districts are planning to implement strategies in the upcoming school year that migrate instruction, curriculum and assessment to the new standards. To help educators prepare for upcoming changes, PBS TeacherLine has aligned its online professional development courses with Common Core State Standards.
The alignment means that PBS TeacherLine reading/language arts and mathematics courses provide professional development training and resources that help teachers develop lessons and deliver instruction based on Common Core State Standards and meet students’ individual needs. Teachers can better gauge student progress in mastering the standards and modify instruction to address weaknesses and accelerate achievement.
2011 Ed Tech Digest Cool Tool Awards for Best PD Solution and Best STEM Solution
PBS TeacherLine was selected as a Cool Tool Award winner under both the 'Best Professional Development' and 'Best STEM Solution' categories!
Per EdTechDigest: The products, services and people that made this list are innovative, respected and outstanding cool tools, leaders and trendsetters moving education forward into the 21st century—and are all highly commended. “Innovation in education is exploding,” says Victor Rivero, editor-in-chief of EdTech Digest. “There has never been so much activity in this emerging edtech sector, and there’s never been a more exciting time,” he says. “Thousands of companies are hard at work every day transforming education through technology. These people are the doers. They care deeply and passionately about moving education forward and they’re not wondering if education might reform itself—they’re getting smart, disrupting old models, shifting paradigms and making change happen now.”
PBS LearningMedia™ is a NEW media-on-demand service developed for educators that provides EASY access to classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted, multi-platform digital resources including videos and interactives perfect for the Interactive Whiteboard, plus audio and photos, and even in-depth lesson plans. You can search, save, and share with ease. Best of all, PBS LearningMedia™ is FREE for educators.
With PBS LearningMedia, you can:
Explore innovative digital content
Creatively engage learners of all ages
Transform teaching and Learning
Discover another reason why
PBS is the #1 source of educational media for students and teachers! Register today!
TeacherLine Courses Approved for SC Add-On Online Teaching Certificate
The SC Department of Education has approved several TeacherLine courses for credit towards their Add-On Online Teaching Certificate! The courses must be taken for graduate credit in order to count for the certificate.
View the approved courses and learm more on our Credit page.
FREE Global Climate Change Lessons from PBS and NASA
To help meet the demand for better science instruction in the nation’s schools, PBS TeacherLine has teamed up with NASA to offer a series of free, self-paced professional development modules around the topic of global climate change. These three- to five-hour online modules are intended to increase teachers’ knowledge of the science behind global climate change and give them classroom resources to share with their students.
Sample modules available:
Introduction to Earth’s Dynamically Changing Climate
How is the Earth’s climate changing? Within the mainstream scientific community the fundamentals of global warming and climate change are no longer in question and increasing evidence shows that human activities play a significant part in contributing to this change. Examine evidence of climate change from different parts of the Earth’s system and consider what it means to live on a planet with a dynamically changing climate.
Earth's Warming Climate: Are We Responsible?
Human activity, including burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and other landscape changes, have increased the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Explore the relationship between increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the record of global temperature on long and short time scales by examining both instrumental data and proxy climate data from ice cores.
Going Local with Global Warming
Climate change is local and global. Examine recent temperature data for local areas and understand the significance of recent temperature records as evidence of a warming climate. Make climate change science more relevant to students through examining local data.
The Climate Change Skeptic’s Argument: Natural Solar Cycles or Human Activity?
The patterns of contemporary climate change we see are the result of natural factors or processes operating in or on Earth’s dynamic climate system as well as the impact of human activity. Examine Total Solar Irradiance data and evaluate whether contemporary global climate change can be explained by the variable energy output of our nearest star. Explore ways to introduce interactions of the dynamic climate system into your classroom.
This past summer has been a busy one for us, including earning the FULL alignment to all the ISTE NETS•T 2008 standards for our PBS TeacherLine / ISTE Capstone Certificate Program. We are the ONLY organization to be fully aligned to both the Seal of Alignment for Development and Seal of Alignment for Assessment!
PBS TeacherLine
was selected as a Best in Tech award winner for professional development by Scholastic Administr@tor magazine's expert reviewers. Each year Scholastic Administrator designates education products and solutions reviewed by top school district leaders as the Best in Tech. This year's Best in Tech awards celebration took place at ISTE's national conference in Denver, Colorado.
The Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) has named PBS TeacherLine® and four of its online facilitated courses as a finalist for the 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award in the professional development category for curriculum and instruction. The four instructional technology courses offered by PBS TeacherLine that were entered in the awards program and earned recognition are:
TECH 340: Evaluating and Organizing Internet Resources and Content;
TECH 330: Communicate and Collaborate Online;
TECH 325: Searching and Researching on the Internet; and TECH 315: Cooperation and Collaboration in the 21st Century.
New Research Reveals PreK-12 Educators Increasingly Value and Use Digital Media
ARLINGTON,
Va., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new national research
report, "Digitally Inclined," compiled by Grunwald Associates
LLC for PBS, teachers are making significant progress in adoption
of digital media and Internet use. These findings clearly signal
widespread changes in both early childhood and K-12 education, including
more effective individualized instruction.
Grunwald
Associates LLC, the independent research and consulting firm, which
conducted the study under a grant from PBS, released the findings
today from their annual survey on educators' use of media and technology.
PBS is sharing select findings from the 2009 survey conducted by
Grunwald, which has been examining educators' media use for PBS
since 2002, to provide information about both instructional needs
and trends to education leaders, policymakers, and the media industry.
This year's survey includes data collected from pre-K educators
for the first time.
"The significant
increases in the usage, frequency and access to digital media in
the classroom over the past several years, along with the research
showing that integrating multimedia and technology into instruction
can boost student achievement, is driving our strategy to produce
the most effective media for learning," said Rob Lippincott,
senior vice president of education for PBS. "We're especially
pleased that PBS emerged as the number one source of educational
TV and online content among pre-K teachers in the survey."
(See
the link above for key findings from the survey and more information.)
PBS TeacherLine Partnership with NASA Press Release
Climate change -- one of the greatest challenges facing humanity and
a major concern to young people -- is the focus of upcoming
online professional development courses and teaching resources from
PBS TeacherLine® (www.pbs.org/teacherline)
and The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
PBS
TeacherLine, the premier provider of online professional development
services for preK-12 educators, has been awarded funding from the
NASA Global Climate Change Education grant, totaling nearly $600,000,
to help educators engage students in critical lessons on climate
change, while teaching science, technology, engineering, and math
(STEM) concepts.
Through our
project, "Teaching Climate Change (TCC):K-12 Online Professional
Development from PBS and NASA", PBS will develop two fully-online,
facilitated, graduate level professional development courses focused
on climate change. The courses will be delivered via the existing
PBS TeacherLine infrastructure.
One course will
target teachers of grades 5-8 and the other will be for teachers
of grades 9-12. Both courses will enhance teachers' content
knowledge of climate change, provide guidance about teaching climate
change using effective STEM instructional techniques, and facilitate
the integration of NASA data, models and other NASA resources into
classroom instruction.
The grant runs
from August 1, 2009 through July 31, 2012.
Marilyn Stansbury,
director of education for Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), said
this is just the beginning of this partnership.
"We will
continue to work together to find ways we can provide high-quality,
low-cost professional development opportunities for Georgia teachers,"
Ms. Stansbury said. "We are excited to launch this new partnership
with the Georgia Department of Education and the state's educators."
Superintendent
Cox said school systems can use federal Title 1 or stimulus funds
to pay for educators to take TeacherLine classes. More information
will be sent to schools this week.
PBS TeacherLine is now a Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) PD
Affiliate
The Partnership
for 21st Century Skills is the leading advocacy organization focused
on infusing 21st century skills into education. The organization
brings together the business community, education leaders, and policy
makers to define a powerful vision for 21st century education to
ensure every child's success as citizens and workers in the 21st
century by providing tools and resources to help facilitate and
drive change.
The Partnership
for 21st Century Skills Professional Development Affiliate Program
equips individuals and organizations with resources and assistance
in integrating 21st century skills into their professional development
practice.
PBS TeacherLine Products Receive High Quality Rating from Government
Review Panel
As a U.S. Department
of Education Ready to Teach grantee, PBS TeacherLine participates
each year in the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) product
assessment process. We are pleased to announce that in early July
2009, PBS received notification that PBS TeacherLine received the
highest rating possible, "High Quality," on both of the
products that were submitted for review. The GPRA review is a rigorous
evaluation through which the U.S. Department of Education brings
together experts in online education to closely assess the products
and progress of the Ready to Teach grantees.
This year, PBS
TeacherLine submitted two products. The first was a professional
development module from PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection, our online
resource and collaboration tool designed to aid Teacher Leaders
in their role assisting teachers and providing professional development.
The second product was "TECH 330: Communicate and Collaborate
Online," our online, graduate-level course for K-12 teachers
interested in exploring the power of the Web and learning about
using the most current technologies to engage students and increase
academic achievement.
Both
the numerical ratings and the accompanying narrative were very positive.
Regarding Peer Connection, one reviewer noted: "The rater found
this to be very detailed and useful for teachers in coaching, resource,
mentoring and other PD roles. The materials were of high quality
and up-to-date, providing the teacher leader with a virtual tool
box of materials. It also addressed many of the essential skills
that are needed to perform the job. The ease of use of the product
makes it very worthwhile."
Regarding the
online course, one reviewer said: "Yes, this course does exactly
what it is intended to do through its many activities in making
the novice instructor proficient in using online tools to collaborate
and communicate in the virtual classroom. Again, this course can
be used by novice to more advanced users and can even be a refresher.
The skill sets can be used beyond the online community."
PBS TeacherLine’s New Summer Alumni in Good Company
PBS
TeacherLine has garnered the highest number of national enrollments
for its Summer 2009 term, more than any other term since its courses
were released nationwide five years ago. Cumulatively, more than
41,000 educators have completed PBS TeacherLine courses to improve
their skills, gain continuing education units and graduate credit,
and advance their careers.
In a survey
PBS TeacherLine conducted of its alumni in late 2008, 88 percent
of the 1,225 respondents said they have been able to incorporate
the instructional strategies from the course(s) in their classroom
practice, and 83 percent said there had been a positive impact on
student learning because of instructional strategies acquired through
the course(s).
PBS TeacherLine
received a Best in Tech 2008-2009 award from Scholastic Administr@tor
magazine for Professional
Development Resources. The award was presented at the
2009 International Society for Technology in Education’s National
Education Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington D.C. Every award
winner chosen as the Best in Tech has been handpicked and carefully
evaluated by expert administrator-level reviewers for technology
solutions, not just products.
“The NEA
Academy was founded to meet the needs of teachers and education
support professionals by providing effective, efficient, and economical
professional development courses from leading providers, like PBS
TeacherLine,” said Mark Stevens, vice president of Professional
& Web Solutions for NEA Member Benefits. “This agreement
signals our commitment to bringing the best professional development
opportunities—at a discount—to our members.”
the
prestigious 2007 CODiE Award for "Best Online Instruction
Solution" presented by the Software and Information
Industry Association (SIIA); view the press
release
the
2007 21st Century Best Practice Distance Learning Awards
by the USDLA; view the press
release
