(W Feb 3, 1-2:30pm Eastern Standard Time) Many of us have the basics to teaching online down, but there are still delays, hiccups, and a suite of things that may go wrong each time we start a video meeting. Little things we learned to do without thought in our first few years to teaching once again plague us, such as handing out materials, knowing if every person is present (when their audio and video are both off), getting full participation,…

(F Feb 5, 11am-12:30pm Eastern Standard Time) The purpose of this 1.5-hour workshop is to organize your teaching load into discrete groups that you can access so contact is continuous. I will guide you through the process of creating virtual classrooms using a program called Google Classroom*. This program allows you to build a classroom for each of your courses so your students can find their assignments, turn in homework, get feedback on their work, and receive their grades. Although…

(F Feb 5, 1pm-2:30pm Eastern Standard Time) In order to promote intellectual curiosity and advance the collective, individual participants must trust one another so they can take risks, offer ideas, disagree respectfully, and collaborate freely. Starting the year with new students who are not meeting in person as a group will present some unique challenges. Even within a group familiar with one another, this interdependence can be difficult. So, how will you build a collaborative culture in your online classroom?…

(Tu Feb 9, 7-8:30pm Eastern Standard Time) In this 1.5 hr. workshop participants will use an example data set to explore different methods of depicting the same set of numbers in several different ways. We will define the relationship between the research question and the visual representation of data and address the impact visual presentations make on conclusions. As a participant you will be guided through activities you can use with your students in either a synchronous or asynchronous teaching…

(W Feb 10, 11am-12:30pm Eastern Standard Time) Often by middle school and certainly by high school, students default to the mean as the best way to describe data without much consideration for how they might defend that choice. So, you might think, what’s the harm in that? Everyone knows what is meant by this descriptor, it is familiar and understandable, easy to calculate, and informative, right? In this workshop, we will use an activity to collect data and consider the…

(W Feb 10, 1-2:30pm Eastern Standard Time) Competitions are assignments that guide students through a preliminary exploration, data collection, analysis, reflection, and revision in a repeating cycle. This process leans on the scientific method and helps students practice character skills such as persistence, curiosity, critical thinking, and self-direction. For my own purposes, I will differentiate team challenges from competitions in that competitions are assessed with quantitative measurements that allow clear winners to emerge in an objective manner. Participants in this…

(F Feb 12, 11am-12:30pm Eastern Standard Time) In this 1.5-hour workshop, we will compare several online video meeting platforms that you may find useful for holding synchronous classes. We will go over the pros and cons of several popular programs (Zoom, Google Meets, Microsoft Teams, and Webex) discussing why you may choose one over another. This is not an IT workshop where we work out technical difficulties, the focus of this workshop will be on the quality of the platform…

(F Feb 12, 1pm-2:30pm Eastern Standard Time) Risk-taking is a characteristic of the IB learner profile because it sets students apart from their peers as leaders. Risk-taking with deliberation and defined outcome is a characteristic of good decision-making, however, blind risk-taking based on impulsivity is not. But how do we encourage this attribute in our students such that they gain the benefits it brings in innovation and invention without the pitfalls of recklessness? The secret lies in making thinking visible.…