Organizing Technology Training

One of my jobs, both as Campus Tech and as being one of the teachers in my district with long seniority is to teach technology classes.

Plus I get to take a ton.

When I organize a technology training, but it for non-CS teachers or for CS teachers, I focus on what the tool I am teaching will do for the teacher in the classroom.  I like for my training students to come away with a project that they have done and they can go back and think about it.

I try hard to keep my talking to the group to a minimum.  I’ll introduce what we are going to do, do a short demo and then walk around the room and help people do their own projects.  I also try to break things into as small as things as possible. Typical organize is:

• Introduce the topic in the morning.
• Demo 1
• Hands on activity
• Reflection time as a group
• Demo
• Hands on activity
• Reflection time as a group.

I try to get the group together to share what they have learned, what problems they had, etc.  I’ll often remember what I helped someone with and ask them what they learned from the experience.

I find when I’m in the classroom and it is organized that way, I learn more. I figure my brain works the same.