January 24, 2010

Great Ideas for Spring Staff Development

Filed under: January,Tech Tutorials — mbrown @ 11:46 pm

The ALTEC Video Channel is a great way for staff development providers to learn to use high quality online tools and software directly from our own experienced staff of trainers. Watch the videos to learn to use a variety of online tools and educational software, then train your staff to use those tools to improve teaching and learning in their own classrooms. Here is a sample of what is available at the ALTEC Video Channel.

Create online quizzes with QuizStar

QuizStar, the extremely popular online quiz creator, is currently used by K-12 schools and universities all over the world. Teachers create online quizzes complete with media, manage all of their classes, and even analyze quiz results in minutes to determine weak areas that need further instruction. Save hours of grading time and keep your students on task with quizzes that they can take from any Internet connected computer. The ALTEC Video Channel has three QuizStar tutorials currently available to teach the following skills:

  • How to set up a class and add students
  • How to add high quality media to QuizStar
  • How adding high quality video, audio, and graphics can enhance your quizzes

These videos demonstrate QuizStar’s user-friendly format and highlight the benefits of using QuizStar in the classroom.

Create high-quality rubrics in minutes with RubiStar

Creating high-quality rubrics for projects and assignments can be difficult and time consuming. RubiStar allows teachers to choose from sixty customizable rubric templates for oral projects, products, multimedia, science, research and writing, work skills, math, art, music, and reading. In addition to creating rubrics, RubiStar has an extensive database of more than 100,000 rubrics already created by educators. This is a great way for teachers to find inspiration for new projects and assignments. The ALTEC Video Channel has a three part series that demonstrates the following skills:

  • Search RubiStar
  • Create a RubiStar account
  • Create and customize a rubric
  • Login, Analyze, edit, and enhance your rubric

RubiStar is available in English and Spanish. In less than 15 minutes you can learn to use RubiStar like a pro and pass that knowledge on to your staff.

Using Inspiration software in the classroom

Inspiration software allows users to create concept maps. Creating concept maps during class discussions and displaying them on a SMARTboard in the classroom is a great way to really engage students in class discussions. The ALTEC Video channel has a three part series that demonstrates a wide variety of best practice examples for the use of concept maps in the third-grade classroom and beyond.

The ALTEC Video Channel continues to be updated, you can view the resources mentioned in this article at: http://www.youtube.com/user/altecvideos. Find inspiration for your own staff development workshop using the free resources available to you through ALTEC.

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