Real Learning First Professional Development Seminars
Teachers, support the Real Learning First initiative by hosting an interactive PD seminar for your colleagues and other educational stakeholders in your area.
Each half day seminar is designed to stimulate professional conversations on issues related to testing, assessment, accountability and the professionalism of teachers.
This series contains three seminars:
Seminar 1: Putting Real Learning First
This seminar provides an opportunity to reflect on the intrinsic purposes of school and education, and reconsider how we frame our work in schools. Features a discussion process around the CBC news feature Teacher's Challenge: Seven Days in a Struggling School
Seminar 2: Learning in the 21st Century
In this session we will use a literature based approach and a world café discussion forum to examine the changing nature of learning, consider skills for the future, and explore issues surrounding technology mediated learning.
Seminar 3: Measuring What Matters
In this final seminar, participants will dialogue about how we can measure what we value, rather than valuing what we can easily measure, affirm the importance of developing the full range of student abilities and capacities and share suggestions for building and assessing real student learning.
We cannot hold back our students from becoming their best selves-creative and innovative individuals who will belong to a world that honors the diversity and complexity of our communities. This session will explore the kinds of teaching and learning that will be critical to success in a 21st century landscape of accelerating change.This participation based series will examine four key questions:
- What will it mean to be well educated (K-12) and how will my actions shape the future for education?
- What does society want and expect from its schools?
- What kind of teaching and learning will we need?
- How do we know if we are successful?
Contact Barnett House at 780-447-9400 or 1-800-232-7208 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for further enquiries and resources.
Seminar 1: Teaching and Learning for the Future—Metaphors for Learning
Recently participants of a Real Learning First Seminar were asked to develop metaphors that would express their hopes for an ideal public education system that would serve the needs of 21st century students. These participants developed an amazing range of metaphors that revealed that teachers are anxious to abandon the industrial/factory metaphor for learning and embrace the challenges inherent in change. Below, find some samples of work done by teachers from Calgary, Alberta.
