This month's theme is Professional Development. As we highlight throughout this newsletter, summer offers a wonderful opportunity to renew skills, reflect on your current practice, and perhaps to explore new professional growth opportunities. In other words, it's time to take some time for yourself. We'll see you again in August!

As a special note for our Massachusetts-based readers, please note that Sun Associates would be happy to discuss collaborating with your district around the creation of a 2001/2002 MA Department of Education TLCF grant. For more information about how we can assist you with funding requests under fund codes 607, 612, or 614 please see our special page on MA TLCF grants

This issue and back issues of Sun Associates news are available online.

Please feel free to email any of the contributors of our newsletter with your comments and suggestions for upcoming issues. We are always looking for submissions and ideas to make Sun Associates News better and more relevant to your work.

IN THIS ISSUE

I. THIS MONTH'S FEATURE -- Reflecting on Professional Development
II. INTEGRATION IDEA OF THE MONTH -- Water Safety Trading Cards
III. SPOTLIGHT ON THE WEB-- Professional Development, Online
IV. ON THE HORIZON -- June - August Calendar Listings and Upcoming Events
V. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE

I. THIS MONTH'S FEATURE: Reflecting on Professional Development-- Jeff Sun

If you are involved in developing and implementing technology professional development in your school, the end of the school year is an appropriate time to reflect on the progress you and your teachers have made over the past year.

In a previous issue of Sun Associates News, we considered the topic of data collection and surveys. The point there was to develop a data collection strategy which could effectively document your current status and thereby provide data to support professional development or planning efforts. So, let's say that you have collected your data, and know that some of your training has achieved its goals, and other work has fallen short of its mark. What next?

Now, it's time to dig a bit deeper in your analysis and to consider a full range of professional development models and approaches. Perhaps you've been relying on workshops as your only strategy. Maybe you've found that while workshops seem to satisfy most of your teachers these sessions are not reaching a core group of staff who are "set in their ways" and label your workshops as "not applicable" to their particular needs. Well, they could be right. What other strategies have you tried?

There are a number of resources on the Sun Associates website which we feel are helpful in guiding you through a reflection upon your current professional development strategies.

• Professional Development for Instructional Technology is a presentation designed to assist you in matching professional development strategies to your school or district-wide goals for technology integration.
• Administrative Outreach discusses the need to involve administrators as participants in your professional development efforts. Time and again we are reminded of the fact that no technology integration effort can truly succeed without the buy-in of school and district administrators.
• Creating Long-term Change with Technology Professional Development helps you consider some of the larger, systems change, issues surrounding your technology professional development efforts. It's important to remember that technology integration is an innovation in existing practice for many teachers. Thus, technology professional development is really about introducing and supporting innovation. Viewed within this context, you can use what we know about the change process to fine-tune your technology training program.

Finally, if you are looking for some outside support in developing and implementing a professional development program in your school or district, take a look at our menu of professional development services. This document highlights some of the professional development options developed by Sun Associates for clients around the country. Perhaps there's a topic or approach here that can add spice and impact to your program in the coming year.

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II. INTEGRATION IDEA OF THE MONTH -- Heather Hurley

Welcome to the Integration Idea of the Month. Each month we share a technology project that you can implement in your classroom. All lessons are designed for the one or few computer classroom, though a lab setting will work just as well.

Teachers, why not use this summer to modify one or two existing curriculum activities? Many teachers find it useful to explore the process of technology integration by modifying an existing curriculum activity to make use of technology tools. In this way, you are not creating new curriculum activities. Rather, you are using technology to improve the delivery of the current curriculum. 

Sun Associates has many lesson planning resources at their website. Take a look at the Links to Educational Resources and Lesson Plans that can be found at Sun Associates WWW Resources.

As school comes to a close, many children will be heading for fun in the water. This is why water safety is very important for children to learn. This lesson teaches children about basic safety rules for swimming pools, lakes, or oceans.

For a detailed description, check out the lesson plan for Water Safety Trading Cards on the Sun Associates website.

If you have questions or suggestions for future projects, email Heather.

Happy integrating :)

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III. SPOTLIGHT ON THE WEB -- Melissa Chatfield

As the school year comes to close, many teachers spend time over the summer reflecting on their teaching practices and learning new skills to prepare for the upcoming school year. This summer, use the WWW to meet your professional development needs and improve teaching and learning in your classroom.

If you are interested in learning about hot topics in education like constructivism, assessment and evaluation, or inquiry based learning, visit wNetSchool) and click on the Concept to Classroom free online workshops. In addition, wNetSchool offers Internet in Action: Web in the Classroom, an online, credit-bearing course for K-12 teachers on using the Internet and WWW in the classroom. This six week long course runs from June 29, 2001 through August 10, 2001 and can be taken without credit for a small fee.

Increasingly, colleges and universities are offering online distance learning courses as well as entire degree programs online. If you are interested in taking educational technology courses, check out some of the following programs:

• Pepperdine University
• Plymouth State University ,
• Lesley College

Also, a great way to see what other teachers are doing in terms of creating web-based courses is to visit the "Free Course Creation" section of Blackboard.com's site. Here, you can create you own free course or search for already-created courses by keyword. Many courses are available for free and you can see how a course is structured and perhaps take a test drive of this exciting new professional development format.

Questions, comments? Email Melissa.

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IV. ON THE HORIZON -- Lara Buchko

June - August's Educational Technology Events:

June 24 - 29, 2001
Exeter, NH
Phillips Exeter Academy
Secondary School Mathematics and Technology Conference

June 25 - 27, 2001
Chicago, IL
National Educational Computing Conference 2001
Be sure to attend our "Make and Take" session on creating online surveys!

July 24 - 26, 2001
Arlington, VA
Society for Applied Learning Technology Conference

August 8 - 10, 2001
Madison, WI
17th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning

Next Issue

The Newsletter will be on hiatus for the summer. We will resume publication in September and the theme will be Back to School. We invite you to submit related ideas, resources, or information to any of our writers (email addresses are in each section's byline). If we publish your contribution in our next newsletter, we'll send you a free gift!!

If you have questions about our upcoming events, or if you would like to submit an educational technology event for our calendar, please email Lara

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V. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE

We hope you enjoyed reading the ideas and information in Sun Associates News. If you have received this newsletter forwarded by a friend and would like to to receive your own copy, simply send an email -- with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject -- to us at newsletter@sun-associates.com. If you would prefer not to receive future issues via email please let us know by emailing to newsletter@sun-associates.com. Just put the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject of your email message.

Sun Associates offers this monthly newsletter as a service to educators interested in issues related to the integration of technology in schools. Our firm specializes in technology evaluation, planning, and professional development. We work with teachers across the country and bring this breadth of experience to all of our work. This newsletter is designed to share some of our recent findings and experiences.

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