2nd After School Session: Dec. 12th

Monday I had 2nd work time session on D.I. with SMART Notebook technology. One of the teachers that attended last time came to this session. She is a veteran teacher and needs a lot of assistance with technology. She worked on completing the lesson that she began last month. She plans to attend next week’s session too.
The other 2 teachers that were able to stay have differing levels of comfort when using technology. One of the teachers is a 1st year teacher and is very comfortable with it, picks it up very quickly. He changed a lesson he created weeks ago and made it into a lesson that incorporates D.I. principles based on the U.D.L. model. The other teacher is a special educator. She co-teaches for language arts and humanities classes. She needed a lot of help using the technology because she does not get to collaboratively create many D.I. lessons with both of her co-teachers. So she created an introduction activity for her students and based it upon their multiple intelligences to try and address as many as possible. She was able to complete part of the activity and wanted to try and have it finished for this week.
Some of the problems that I ran into were staff members that wanted to attend; a 7th grade co-teaching team of teachers, were unable to come to the session. One of the teachers, who needs guidance creating a lesson with technology, but implements the lessons well, had car problems. The other 2 teachers in this collaborative team were driving her to take care of this problem. They came by to apologize that they could not stay and asked about the next time that they could. I explained that I would have one on the 19th (the following Monday) and they said that they were going to look at their schedule and see if they would be able to attend.
I had at least 3 or 4 other emails/ conversations with staff members saying that they planned to attend, but because grades were due that day, they were unable to do so. They asked me when the next scheduled work session would be, and said they would attend next week. So far, I have at least 10 people that may be attending tomorrow’s work session. I am also going to talk to my principal and ask him if I could have a whole P.D. session on D.I. with SMART Notebook and other technologies in January or February. In February, we are scheduled to have LeAnn Nickolsen, a specialist on D.I. to come to our school and I would like for us to present some of the D.I. lessons that the staff has created in the work sessions.
I am hoping that the session will go well tomorrow and I can begin working on having the staff members (that are in attendance) incorporating videos, SMART response quiz questions, and other online resources to help with their D.I. lesson.