Hello Everyone,

Thanks to everyone who attended the professional development on Monday. The day went well and we have received some good feedback on what teachers needs are. In February we have some excellent PD opportunities coming into the district.

United Streaming
Jennifer Parker-Moore from the Macomb ISD will be at Pinewood on February 5th to train teachers in United Streaming. Some of our teachers have attended this at the ISD and had gave it excellent reviews so we decided to bring it into the district. Come register and learn how United Streaming is more than just a place to get videos!

Pearson Inform
I know there has been some questions about the status of the Pearson products (Inform and Benchmark) and whether or not we would continue using them in the district. The decision has been made to continue with Pearson and thus we will begin the process of ensuring that all teachers and staff are trained in its use. The first training date will be in February 18th from 2:45-4:45 in the Distance Learning Lab at the High School. Come learn about how you can look up data on your students
MEL for the K-12 Classroom
MEL stands for Michigan Electronic Library and on February 25th Kathy Swanger, head librarian and the MISD, and Denice Hildebrandt will be facilitating some training on the electronic resources that MEL can offer classroom teachers free of charge. This will be held in the Middle School Media Center. Time will be given to teachers to search their own specialized topics.

Again, if you have any suggestions for PD that you think would benefit teachers in the district, please let me know.

Welcome back everyone! I hope that you all had great holidays and a relaxing vacation.

Professional Development
I added multiple PD sessions that the MISD is offering during the months of January and February. There is a lot of sessions for teaching science in every grade level or subject. Check them out and sign up. Remember that the address is http://www.wwpscurriculum.com

Thank you all for the successful beginning of this flexible PD program. We had 261 registrations and many people have already completed their 30 hour requirement during 2008.

As always if you have any ideas for PD sessions that you think that teachers need or that you can facilitate please let me know so that we can discuss the idea and continue to meet the professional development needs of the teachers in the district.

Blackboard
As many of you know the MISD has updated Blackboard to version 8. This will give us many new tools to use with students as well as faster functionality. The address of the new Blackboard site is http://bb8.misd.net/ . The MISD will be running dual Blackboard systems for the rest of this year so that teachers that use the Blackboard gradebook would not have any data issues in the upgrade. Unless you are using the Gradebook, I would encourage all of you to start using version 8 now. All of your courses have already been copied over to the new system and it is ready to go. You do not want to be doing things in both systems as a change in one will not translate to the other. Please update your shortcuts to Blackboard and we will get our weblinks updated at the district level.