Facilitating Online PD Sessions for Educators

 This week I was reminded about how challenging it can be to facilitate an online session for adult learners. My school learning & development department has created an incredible training to support those of us teaching educators. They are working on some updates and revamps, a few of us were asked to participate in some discussion questions so there will be something for newbies to see and respond to when taking the course. The questions go along with some great articles, but of course I didn't even read those until after I answered the discussion questions :D Leave it to me to make things harder than they have to be!

The questions for those taking the training ask them to dig deep and plan ahead - like What brings you here? Participants in the training are volunteers for the most part, so this is such a great question that ensures they know what they are getting into! Then there are some discussions asking participants to provide tips for designing engaging visuals, discuss how their planning changes when it's virtual or in-person, and provide tips on facilitating blended learning sessions.

Just engaging in these discussions made me really think about the skills I have acquired over the past few years and how I can continue to hone them. I'll be honest, I'm prone to using PowerPoint for conveying information, and you may thinking, really?!?! In this day and age? But yes, I think there are some great benefits to using PPT when facilitating a sessions in Teams - they talk to each other. Teams has this great feature called "PowerPoint Live" that allows you to share your PPT on the screen but it also makes it interactive for participants. They can click on links in the PPT and watch videos directly on it during the presentation. I can allow them to move around in the slideshow, or restrict them to seeing just what's currently on the screen. 

'Graphic Organizers' becomes a live link when presenting PowerPoint Live in Teams.

PowerPoint also provides some really great visuals including templates that can fit a theme or just look professional. The Designer button will also give suggestions! I love this feature because sometimes I have an image I don't know how to place well, or have some wonky word spacing. The Designer usually comes up with great suggestions and makes the presentation more engaging and professional looking. 

Screenshot of Designer with the given suggestions.

I didn't think I would go on-and-on about this topic so I will stop here for now and continue later. Check out the features of PowerPoint in your Microsoft suite or create a free Microsoft Outlook account to see the online features (not as great but still really useful)!

One of my favorite templates.

Guess who back? AI is back...

 Okay, it never went away, but we are piloting some versions of Microsoft Copilot that are embedded in their apps, like Excel, Word, and Teams among others. This has been going on for just a few weeks, so there are ups and downs, and limitations we are discovering.

First off, it's nice to have Copilot inside the app you are working on so it can read your document and respond. A colleague sent over some survey results for a survey she gave last year. It had 175 responses and I did not have time to comb through them all. I exported the results to Excel and asked it to summarize each column of answers. It was quick and easy, plus it gave me some wording I used in my presentation that included the survey data! 

There have been other times when I've asked Copilot to summarize some data or help me to collate it, but it doesn't like the headings. Yesterday when I was working with an Excel report from ALEKS (our math support platform) it refused to do anything until I fixed the headings and spacing, which I refused to do haha

Now when I open up Word, Copilot is already prompting me. If I want to write a reference letter for a colleague I can easily ask Copilot to help me write that letter. Of course, that's just one example and I'm excited to try out other ideas.

As I continue to play around with the features I will try to update here. Please leave a comment and let me know about your experiences with AI!

Microsoft OneNote

 Okay, yeah, this is another post about Microsoft products... I can't help it because my school is deeply involved in Microsoft!

But really, OneNote is a tool that can be used at home and at school, so it's a dual purpose here.

It's like having a 7-subject+ spiral notebook right on your computer. You can create different sections (for any subject you can think of) and then create pages within each section to hold any info you may need. This includes links, videos, voice recordings, PDF print outs, and more.

As an instructional coach I have used OneNote to collaborate with a teacher on coaching cycles. All of our notes, links, data, etc. will go into the notebooks so we can reference them throughout the cycle and the school year. It becomes a one-stop shop for me and the teacher, plus they can use the notebook for their evaluations with the principal.

Recently I have used OneNote to help me plan out lessons I am building in Schoology. It has helped me to create a standardized format for the lessons, including colors, highlighting, and outline. It's nice to come back to the OneNote and easily start a new lesson by using the templates I have created. [You could probably use this for Google Classroom too - build your basic course and template in OneNote, then copy/paste into Classroom.]

OneNote can also be a great way to organize yourself at home too. Use it for lists, planning parties, or gathering important documents.

If you have Microsoft at your school, then you should be able to access OneNote in the apps page. If not, it's easy to create a free Outlook/Microsoft account and utilize OneNote from the browser.

Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert

 A few years ago, the leadership at my school said that a small group of us would need to apply to become MIEEs. It honestly felt like it came out of the blue, but was actually tied to our showcase school status with Microsoft. The Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert program came about to bring educators across the US (and the world) together to share and learn more about Microsoft education products.

The application - when I first applied - asked for a lot of evidence that I was using Microsoft products in my classroom or with staff. I had a lot of fun making my first Sway application! It was easy to find all sorts of ways I was using Microsoft products throughout my school day.

Here is the link to my application:

MIE Expert Application

April Griffith-Stephen

Go to this Sway

I chose 2 Microsoft apps to focus on, OneNote and and Teams.

OneNote is a notebook-like application that can be used for all sorts of reasons. In school I have used it to help me track instructional coaching with teachers I support, connections and notes for myself around teachers, information about students in my classes, and helping me keep organized when planning lessons. OneNote allows you to create sections and then within those sections you can create pages - it's very similar to a 5-subject notebook you might be at the store, although you can have more than 5 subjects!

Teams is Microsoft's instant messaging & video platform, but it also contains digital classrooms. When I first applied to be an MIEE in 2020, Teams was new but something I used everyday. In the past 4 years the features have increased and it's become very classroom friendly. During the stay-at-home COVID era, Zoom and other video platforms were making leaps and bounds of progress in their systems. There are still features in Zoom that I admire and hope that Microsoft will copy, but Teams has taken a slower, more methodical approach to rolling out their features. 

Check out my following blog posts to learn more about both of these applications.