Contact us and we can make arrangements for you to meet with the team member of your choice who will discuss the professional development needs for your school and create a plan to address those needs. We can work privately or as Cognition Education Associates. Contact us to find out how We can support you in the writing of a proposal and delivery of MOE Funded PLD. We offer tailor made professional development to suit your needs or we can come into your school and take workshops for staff or leaders.
We offer the following workshops;
Strategic Planning using the E-learning Planning Framework This series of workshops is primarily for leaders and provides a methodology to create an effective e-learning strategy plan to develop a relevant professional development programme for your school.
Google Classroom Google Classroom is a simple “teacher dashboard” which enables teachers to assign, manage and interact with student work. It allows teachers to create, distribute and collect tasks online. During this workshop, you will use Google classroom to set up your class and explore how this blended learning platform supports learning and teaching. This workshop is suitable for middle - upper primary school.
Digital Citizenship This workshop provides an introduction to digital citizenship. We will briefly explore Cybersafety, digital literacy and digital citizenship practices, policies and procedures. We will provide you with digital tools and strategies that foster digital citizenship practices in real-life contexts. Building on this workshop, a further series around the theme of digital citizenship will be available where each of these strands will be explored in depth.
Innovative Learning Pedagogy and Practice Pedagogy underpins practice in an innovative learning environment. In this workshop learn about innovative ways of learning and teaching within your school's unique context. Find out how to integrate collaborative teaching, student agency, impact of physical spaces and digital fluency into teaching practice.
Literacy with a Google lens How effectively is your school meeting the literacy learning needs of your students who are not progressing as expected? In this hands-on workshop, you will explore a range of digital tools to transform your literacy programme using Google Apps for Education (G Suite). You will take away a suite of digital tools and strategies that will enable you to integrate digital technologies into reading and writing to personalise and enhance the learning experiences of your students. Motivate those reluctant readers and writers, and challenge and excite your students!
Create, Connect and Collaborate with i-Pads Collaboration and creativity are important influences in improving student learning. This workshop will enable you to optimise the learning experience for your students using i-Pads. Find out about a range of creative and collaborative tools that enhance the learning process and enable students to work together in creative ways to improve their learning outcomes. Leave with a set of strategies and apps to make student learning come alive in the classroom in a purposeful way.
Digital Tools to support the Writing Programme In this workshop explore how the use of digital technologies can further enrich your writing programme. This will be an engaging and hands-on workshop covering deeper features of writing as assessed by e-asTTle. This includes ideas, structure and language, organisation and vocabulary. You will walk away having added valuable tools to your writing kete which will engage and motivate your students to become better writers.
Enhance Maths using Digital Technologies In this workshop we will explore a range of digital technologies in mathematics to enable you to enrich your classroom programme and enhance the learning experiences of your students. There will be a focus on future-oriented learning and teaching and online professional learning communities. This workshop will enable you to integrate digital technologies that targets specific learning needs and enables personalised learning for students. There will be a specific focus on tools to improve place value, basic facts and strategic thinking.
Digitising Appraisal Have you thought about using an online platform for curating evidence to support the Practising Teacher Criteria (PTC)? This workshop will help you create an ePortfolio which can be used to curate all your appraisal documents, evidence (artefacts: files, images, links, video) and reflections on learning. Your ePortfolio can reflect your professional inquiry, demonstrating how your initiative links to the PTC and how it has impacted on your practice and students’ learning. We will share and discuss different digital platforms.
Evidencing the Impact of Learning with Digital Technologies Professor John Hattie’s Visible Learning research (2009) shows that knowing your impact on learners is vital to be an effective teacher. What we do in the classroom is designed to maximise the potential of all students, so it is really important that we monitor our impact. This workshop will provide you with a framework within the context of “Teaching as Inquiry” to enable you to reflect, analyse and modify your practice to raise positive outcomes for all students. We will focus on the use of digital technologies to evidence your impact on learners and how this connects with curating your evidence for the Practising Teacher Criteria (PTC).
Digital Fluency - Connect, Collaborate and Create! The 4Cs model suggests learning skills that are needed for success in this increasingly complex world. These are communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking. In this hands-on workshop, you will be provided with a range of digital technologies that can be integrated into teaching and learning to enhance each of the 21st century skills of your students.
Practical Strategies to Promote Learning Agency As educators we are aware of the need to promote learner agency. Research based evidence supports this as one of the most important influences in raising student achievement. Learner agency is about choice, voice and ownership of learning by each student. In this workshop, we will explore a variety of strategies to promote learner agency in your classroom with practical examples that include the use of digital tools. You will leave with a kete of ideas and resources to use in your practice.
Ignite your Reading Programme with Digital Technologies Instructional strategies and engaging learners with texts are two key dimensions identified in “Effective Literacy Practice: Ministry Handbooks”. In this hands-on workshop we will provide opportunities for you to engage with digital technologies and specific instructional strategies at all stages of the reading process – preparing for learning, thinking through the learning and using new understandings to improve reading comprehension. You will take away a suite of digital tools to facilitate innovative ways of teaching reading comprehension in your classroom. These digital tools and strategies will enable you to motivate, engage, personalise and enhance the learning experiences of your students.
Connect, Collaborate and Create with Blogging Connecting, sharing, collaborating, learning! In this hands-on workshop you will learn to create a blog and explore the ways to use of blogging in the classroom and find out about resources that can enhance your blog.
Digital Storytelling across the Curriculum How can digital stories enhance the learning process? What kinds of stories might students tell in different curriculum areas? What makes a digital story effective? What resources might we need to create digital stories? This hands-on workshop looks at the age old concept of storytelling repackaged in new ways, bringing stories alive with the addition of sound, music and digital imaging. You will leave this workshop with a kete of digital tools that will enable your students to create digital stories to showcase their learning.
Collaborative Coding in the Classroom This session explores coding as a fun way to learn collaboratively. Participants will be shown a range of coding tools to create games or scenarios for digital stories. You will then use the free programming tool “Scratch” to work together to create your own learning experience. The emphasis is on problem solving through collaboration and an introduction to new ways of learning for your students.
Developing self-directed eLearners in the junior literacy classroom: Daily 5 Using the Daily 5 approach allows students to have choice and control over their learning. In this workshop, you will explore how you can integrate digital technologies in your literacy programme through the use of the Daily 5 approach to create self-directed learners in a junior setting. We will share a range of ways to use technology purposefully to develop learner agency and foster personalised learning in the classroom.
Assessment for learning using digital technologies Assessment for learning (formative assessment) guides and informs teachers and students during the learning process. Current research informs us that student regulated learning is one of the most important influences in raising student achievement. This workshop supports personalised learning by providing digital strategies such as sharing exemplars, creating flip charts, developing online rubrics, feedback tools/strategies and graphic organisers. You will leave this workshop with a kete of digital resources to enhance your teaching and learning practice to develop self-regulated learners who use assessment feedback to improve their outcomes.
Creating a personalised online learning space Personalise the learning process is and promoting learner agency by providing 24/7 access to learning tools tailored to student needs. This workshop is focused on learning how to set up an online learning space using Google Sites. You will leave with a portal for 24/7 learning through a Google website and the skills to create further sites for your students and/or facilitate students developing their own sites.
Digital Literacy Digital literacy has become an essential skill to be a confident, connected, and actively involved lifelong learner. Your students need to know how to use technology effectively and to evaluate and integrate information in multiple digital formats. In this hands on workshop you will explore digital tools and practical skills associated with digital literacy; search and filtering functions, identifying bias, recognising intellectual property, and plagiarism. You will take away strategies and skills to support students to develop 21st century skills and become capable and discerning users of digital information in all learning areas.