Students may be looking forward to a provincial professional development day Friday when schools will be closed but teachers won't be sleeping in.
They'll be attending workshops held across the province, including two in the Tri-Cities, says Lisa DiMarco, professional development chair for the Coquitlam Teachers' Association.
CTA is presenting a workshop on critical thinking and effective groups as part of an eight-session series that began in the summer and the Computer Using Educators of BC (CUEBC) is holding a conference on education technology at Port Coquitlam's Terry Fox secondary.
DiMarco said pro-d days are opportunities for improving teaching skills and teachers use the time to attend conferences, network with teachers from other districts on important topics or research their own professional development.
"As teachers, we have worked hard to gain those pro-d days so we didn't have to do them during weekends and summers. We're given this one day across the province where teachers can come together with teachers from other districts, and travel together with others teachers and find out what other teachers are doing in other districts."
Teachers attending conferences can get partial reimbursement from the CTA and DiMarco said she has a stack of applications to review, with many of the teachers are planning to attend the local conference on technology organized by the CUEBC.
"I see a lot of people wanting to use technology in their classroom and conferences on how to use smart boards seem popular for elementary school teachers," DiMarco said.
Dennis Wong, who is helping to organize the technology conference at Fox, expects between 300 to 400 people to register to attend 40 workshops on topics ranging from how to use social media to 3D animation, to digital storytelling and movie-making in the classroom, and Fox teacher Ryan Cho will be showing educators how to use cellphones as learning tools.
A highlight of the workshop will be a presentation by an American educator who has won renown for discussing ways technology can be used in the classroom. David Warlick will offer ideas on how teachers can reach students who are native to technology in a keynote speech entitled Cracking the Native Information Experience.
"What we want him to do is help teachers to get outside their comfort zone with emerging technology and realize students have embraced this technology and realize we have to embrace it, as well," he said.
Two other conferences have local ties. Douglas College is hosting a conference for physical education teachers at its New Westminster campus and Fox teacher Ken Kuhn is chairing a conference for teachers on the importance of student financial literacy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University's Richmond campus.
