End of the Year Tech PD Iron Chef Style

A twenty-five minute tech "moment" this spring led to some harsh self reflection.  I was dissatisfied with the PD session and disappointed with myself.  Nothing went horribly wrong. The delivery was just entirely "sit and get".  I made time to sit in a quiet room and really think about what I could do differently within the timeframe.  I wanted to construct something that was hands-on and focused on instruction.  I felt the need to challenge all participants (eager and hesitant) to think and get creative.  Out of all this self imposed agony came a PD activity that is a little Iron Chef, a little TPACK, and  wholly hands-on.  I call it Iron Chef Technology.

 Iron Chef Technology challenges participants to create a plan for addressing a given instructional strategy using at least one low tech tool and one high tech tool.   I purchased take out boxes from a local craft store and stuffed a card with directions, a card with a list of tech tools, and one randomly selected card with a low tech tool in each box. I used Google Slides to make the cards and added several slides with various instructional strategies to give myself lots of choices for what to reveal as the featured ingredient.  I thought if things went well there would be value in repeating this activity featuring a different instructional strategy each time.

Thanks to scheduling conflicts I found myself up to present during the end of school year madness that comes with testing followed by still more testing.  The timing was perfect to feature review as the instructional strategy to be addressed.

Iron Chef Technology was a success!  Several participants tracked me down to share how beneficial they found the activity.  One teacher even emailed to share how she implemented the plan she made during the session.  She included a link to the review game she made from the clue cards students created with the motivational posters tool on Big Huge Labs.