professional development Archives

Taking Control Of Your Professional Development

I love professional development. But I don’t like professional development that is imposed on me that really has no relevance to what I’m doing or it’s something that I already know. When I first started teaching, professional development was face to face, and usually not something I chose to do. Fortunately, I worked at a pretty progressive school and much of the professional development was helping us raise the bar and narrow the gap.Read More

How Untold Videos Are Used In Teacher Professional Development

Kelly Bellar is a Region 10 Social Studies consultant in Texas. She’s passionate about social studies education and creating engaging learning environments that integrate technology, collaboration and critical thinking. Texas has 20 different education service centers throughout the state that have been set up to support educators with their teaching. They offer everything from professional development on teaching, instruction and curriculum to bus driving courses. Their remit is to help school districts in any way possible.Read More

Does Animation Enhance Learning?

Is animation more than just an engagement tool, and can it enhance learning? In my first podcast, Can Instructional Videos Make Your Smarter? I looked at whether we can design videos to be more cognitively efficient. In this episode I look at some of the research around animation, and whether it can be used to enhance learning.Read More

Free Bite-Sized CPD Courses Available Now

That’s right. We offer FREE Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Courses! Where are they, you may ask? They are all living in the new Community that we created in October – Video Supercharged Learning!Read More

We’re Building An Online Makematic Community

So we’ve decided to build a Community! A community of educators and education professionals who are interested in improving their use of multimedia in the classroom. We have a lot of expertise in this area and we want to share that expertise with you!Read More

5 Online Teaching Tips to Kickstart Your New School Year

Teaching and learning online doesn’t have to look like this

Another year of teaching online? It’s ok, we’ve got you covered!

2020-21 was perhaps the most challenging school year for many teachers around the world, with intermittent switching between lessons online and offline lessons. As the new school year embarks on us and the new variants causing further complications, teaching online will yet again feature heavily in 2021-22. If you are feeling anxious about the uncertainty already, check out this Q&A page from the WHO to get some clarity. Since there are just a few days (if you are lucky) left before the new school year starts, why not upskill yourself with a few tips and tricks that will make the transition to online teaching a little smoother?Read More

reflective practice illustration of desktop computer

Reflective Practice in Online Learning

Did you know that reflective practice or metacognition has shown promise for improving learning in online learning outcomes? The good news is, however, is that it’s a teachable skill (e.g., Moely et al., 1995; Schraw, 1998).Read More

3 Tips On How To Nail Your Work Experience

Congratulations, you landed yourself work experience! Give yourself a pat on the back for getting one of the hardest parts out of the way when getting experience in any industry. Here at Makematic, we’ve had the pleasure of working with young people from all walks of life to help introduce them to the world of work. Here are our top 3 tips to help you nail your work experience.Read More

Teaching Online Masterclass text on a white background

Teaching Online Masterclass (TOM) Series 2: Now Available

We’re pleased to announce that Teaching Online Masterclass (TOM) Series 2 is now available!

TOM is a free online professional development resource for educators making the leap into remote teaching and learning. With a catalogue of bite-sized videos produced in partnership with Innovate UK, TOM 2.0 will guide the skills K-12 educators can expand on to boost their online teaching. Watching and acting on the practical tips delivered in TOM series 2 will encourage confidence in teachers, and notably, create an enhanced online learning experience for students.Read More

Illustration of Kentucky State for KVEC. Illustration of man sitting with a guitar on his lap

Our Partnership with Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative (KVEC)

‘People needed to know the history of our state (which was half of the stories we told). The other half want to honor our history as a region so others in our state/nation would know our untold story.’ Kimberly Sergent

In 2020, Makematic and the Driving Force Institute for Public Engagement teamed up with the non-profit educational cooperative KVEC (Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative) to create two series for the growing history and civics collection Untold.Read More

Solution to learning loss text with illustration of two students in front of a class

The Solution To Learning Loss – EdTech News May 2021

Learning loss and how the pandemic and hybrid learning have contributed heavily to it has been a debate for a while now.Read More

Priorities for Professional Development

We’ve conducted one to one interviews, and an online survey with 95 educators from Europe, North America, Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, and Africa about their professional development priorities since teaching and learning has gone online.

Here are 4 things that we’ve learned:

Since the coronavirus epidemic, 90% of educators have experienced teaching online, and 57% say they are above average or highly proficient in their ability to teach online.
77% of educators spend between 1 – 5 hours a week on professional development. 36% of professional development comes from their professional learning networks, and 26% from online courses.
Educators want professional development from other educators that have a pedagogical purpose. “CPD needs to be more than ‘how-to’ tutorials. Teachers need to hear from fellow teachers who can implement technologies or strategies with a pedagogical purpose. This is sometimes lacking in online teacher CPD. It is frequently an expert presenting on their passion or app and showing teachers how to use the product rather than explaining the why and the purpose of the tech or tool for teaching within the classroom or online learning environment.”
64% of respondents want pedagogical and or subject-specific focused professional development to help them teach online.

These findings are similar to those found by the National Foundation for Educational Research and RAND.

A Solution To The Problem

So where can educators find online pedagogy focused professional development?

We partnered with Adobe, Clickview, iCivics, and Participate to create Teaching Online Masterclass (TOM). A free online professional development resource for teachers making the leap into remote teaching and learning.

Teaching online is about more than just technology. Of course, it’s important to know your Zooms from your Google Classrooms, but the way educators plan their lessons, manage their class, and engage with their students is different in the online world. So to help educators develop the skills they need to be effective online educators we created TOM.

Using video interviews from classroom educators, academics, and industry professionals, educators can learn how to start teaching online the right way.

Check out TOM here.

Teaching Online Masterclass Whitepaper

We’ve been working on something for a while; a whitepaper. Drawing on the themes from TOM, qualitative and quantitative interviews, and research on best practices in online teaching, we’ve created a resource that shows educators how to put theory into practice. Dr. James Nelson and Dr. Jennifer Roberts from Queen’s University Belfast have helped us with this project which will be released on Monday, November 2nd.

Interested in finding out more about TOM? Check out the resources here.