Problem+Based,+Inquiry+Based,+Student+Centered

Session Description:
Please join us for a day of true collaborative practice. Modeling classroom strategies that foster collaboration and productivity, we will workshop instructional units that you aspire to create, improve or rehabilitate. Drawing upon effective exemplars from a variety of inquiry driven, project based learning environments, we will work to enhance authenticity, incorporate hands on activities, and identify real world connections to bring inquiry-driven projects to life in your classroom.

In addition to enhancing your classroom curriculum, we will also explore a variety of ways to expand your own personal learning network. One of the most empowering pieces of my own professional development occurs online, in an enthusiastic community of teachers and learners. Developing a web of connections to continue learning and growing, as a professional, is imperative in a teaching landscape that aspires to be relevant and engaging. We will brainstorm plans to continue your professional development with resources, spaces and places that will foster further development of the ideas and skills shared during the workshop.

The overarching goal of the workshop will be to leave with appreciable work completed on your unit plans and to develop a path for continuing the work. Participants will be actively engaged in collaboration, creation, analysis and reflection throughout the day. As much as I enjoy the theory of learning and the philosophical underpinnings of teaching, we will spend much of the day in practical activities. Please bring at least two unit ideas to workshop as we will be actively reviewing and retooling them throughout the day.

You will learn: 1. how to expand or develop your personal learning network to enhance your professional practice and lesson effectiveness 2. strategies for fostering inquiry in the curriculum and specific steps for developing effective project-based units and lessons 3. to enhance/create real world connections in your lessons and units using traditional and technological tools so as to foster a student centered learning environment

Presenter Bio: Diana Laufenberg, Philadelphia, PA
Starting out in one of the most hands on, project based learning environments, a Wisconsin farm, [|Diana Laufenberg] has spent her 13 year teaching career embedding meaningful, real world connections into curriculum and the classroom. From that farm in Wisconsin, to small town Kansas, bordering of the Navajo reservation in Arizona, and finally to Center City Philadelphia, she draws on the local community and online resources to involve the world in the education of her students. As a secondary history teacher in a [|1:1 laptop school] as well as in [|traditional, non-technology rich school environments], she knows first hand how to adapt lessons for the differing learning landscapes that arise in American schools. She was honored as the [|Arizona Technology Teacher of the Year] and received the Moral Courage Award from the [|Martin-Springer Institute]. Her expertise spans the curricular landscape as she works collaboratively with colleagues in Professional Learning Communities, on interdisciplinary teams and as a part of an active online network of educators.